This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins

49 points in a third-line role, and a minus-16 goal differential on a 53.5 per cent chance share.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2011-12	EDM	62	18	34	52	-2	16	3	0	2	134	13.4	17:36
2012-13	EDM	40	4	20	24	+3	8	2	0	0	78	5.1	18:52
2013-14	EDM	80	19	37	56	-12	26	6	0	4	178	10.7	20:24
2014-15	EDM	76	24	32	56	-12	25	2	0	2	189	12.7	20:38
2015-16	EDM	55	12	22	34	-9	18	4	0	1	108	11.1	19:04
2016-17	EDM	82	18	25	43	-10	29	5	0	4	200	9.0	17:42
2017-18	EDM	62	24	24	48	+10	20	4	2	2	151	15.9	18:05
2018-19	EDM	82	28	41	69	-13	26	8	1	3	208	13.5	20:06
2019-20	EDM	65	22	39	61	+1	33	7	0	4	172	12.8	20:28
2020-21	EDM	52	16	19	35	-4	22	9	0	2	135	11.8	20:46
2021-22	EDM	63	11	39	50	+3	16	1	3	1	154	7.1	19:19
2022-23	EDM	82	37	67	104	+12	35	15	1	3	201	18.4	19:48
2023-24	EDM	80	18	49	67	+10	36	4	0	3	183	9.8	19:37
2024-25	EDM	78	20	29	49	+4	24	7	2	5	164	12.2	18:58
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	959	271	477	748	-19	334	77	9	36	2255	12.0	19:25

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

20 goals and 29 assists in 78 games for 49 points, plus-4, on 18:58 a night with 2 shorthanded goals.

54.9 per cent at five-on-five, the 90th percentile. His on-ice goals were 42-41 against an expected 46-38 — seven goals of finishing and goaltending running the wrong way, which is the fourth such line in this chapter.

The Finesse Game

A genuinely versatile forward who has been asked to be four different players in a fourteen-year career and has been competent at all of them. The passing is the best of it, the release from the top of the circle is quick, and 48 per cent of his shots come from inside 20 feet.

164 shots and 20 goals at 12.2 per cent is a fair rate. What he does not do is drive a line by himself, which after fourteen seasons is a settled fact rather than a criticism.

The Physical Game

6-1 and 192, and light. He is honest on the forecheck and does not win pucks by force, and he takes the hardest defensive-zone draws on the club without complaint.

24 penalty minutes over 78 games. The durability has been excellent — five consecutive seasons above 75 games.

The Intangibles

The 1st overall pick in 2011, fourteen seasons in one organisation, and a career spent moving down the depth chart as better players arrived and never once making it a story.

At 32 the projection is 45 points and the same reliability. The contract runs long and the value is in the versatility rather than the production.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
ordinaryraised, and called ordinary
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

durable· was available
78 of 82 games
Season to season, this measure repeats weakly (0.32) · 53% keep it
playmakera strength· passes up the shot a scorer takes
“The passing is the best of it”
punishinghe lacks it· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-1 and 192, and light.”
forechecks-aggressivelypresent and ordinary· first man in, and on the puck
“He is honest on the forecheck”
wins-the-wallhe lacks it· the corners and below the goal line
“does not win pucks by force”
faceoffsa strength· takes the draw that starts it
“he takes the hardest defensive-zone draws on the club without complaint.”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,036 minutes

Expected goals: 54.9%; 90th pct
Shot attempts: 54.3%; 89th pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 42 for, 41 against. Expected: 45.7 and 37.5.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

80th

Numbers

90th

The two rank him within 10 points of one another. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 78 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 78 games

Top speed: 22.7 mph; 72nd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.05 a game
Distance: 3.02 miles a game
Hardest shot: 82.9 mph; 32nd pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1036 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club: EDM took 54.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 54.9% — 0.6 above the club he did it on.
The role: First line, 1,036 minutes at five-on-five — 66th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Zach Hyman	58.2%	51.1%	63.8%
Evan Bouchard	56.8%	53.0%	59.0%
Connor McDavid	60.3%	49.3%	60.6%

58.2% together, 51.1% for him apart and 63.8% for Hyman apart. He was the one being carried: the share went with Hyman and did not follow him.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

229 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 20 of them goals. His median goal came from 22 feet. 48% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 18% from beyond forty.