Last Year

Career Year

Oilers fans beloved Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had an unbelievable regular season last year, racking up a whopping 37-67-104 in 82 GP. He increased his year-over-year point total by an insane 54 points, scoring 50 points the previous year. It was a career year by all accounts for Nugent-Hopkins, scoring 9 more goals than his previous career best and 26 more goals than the year before. Nuge also had 26 more assists than his previous career best and 28 more assists than the year before. In total, RNH surpassed his previous career best of 69 points, which came in the 2018-19 season, by 35 points. This came in his 29-year-old season. Career years don’t often come at this stage of a player’s career; you typically would expect it somewhere in the 24-28 age range. So Nuge isn’t too far removed from that, but expecting him to produce more this year in his Age 30 season might be unreasonable, especially given the circumstances that he outperformed any previous season by 35 points.

PP Wizard

Playing for the Red Deer Rebels in his junior career in the WHL, RNH was known to be what some call a power play wizard. Racking up insane amounts of points, he worked the half wall in the offensive zone on the power play, distributing to everyone around him. Last year, according to statmuse.com, RNH had 53 power play points, which is a little more than double his career best of 26 power play points before that.

I believe Nuge is an underrated part of the Oilers’ PP unit and gets overshadowed by Leon and Connor, who rack up all the points. RNH played all 82 games last year, so you can’t look at the difference with/without him last year. However, if you go back to the 2021/22 season, the Oilers’ power play percentage with RNH, Draisaitl, and McDavid sat at 28.2%, wildly high for most teams not named the Edmonton Oilers. That season, RNH missed 19 games, and according to Statmuse.com, the Oilers’ PP% without RNH dropped to only 19.0%. That’s almost a 10% drop without Nuge on the 1st Unit PP. Even though Connor and Leon get most of the love, which is rightly deserved, we cannot discount the effect that RNH has on this group’s historic PP% over the last 3 seasons.

PK Wizard?

RNH not only helps the Oilers cruise to record heights on the power play, but he also assists in a significant manner on the penalty kill for the Oilers. Although the penalty kill was about 2% below average last year at 76.98% (Hockey-Reference.com), we can observe RNH’s impact on the penalty kill by examining the 2021-22 numbers again, where he missed 19 games due to injury. In the 63 games RNH played that season, the Oilers had an average penalty kill percentage of 83.1% (Statmuse.com), which is 4% above the league average. In the 19 games RNH missed, the penalty kill percentage dropped to a dismal 66.7%. That’s bottom-of-the-league levels. People will often criticize RNH for his 5-on-5 results, but his contributions to special teams, both offensively and defensively, along with his unwavering loyalty to the Edmonton Oilers organization, have earned him a lot of leeway in the 5-on-5 numbers department.

Even Strength

Last year, RNH scored 47 ES points, marking a career best by 6 points (he had 41 in 2014-15). On average, RNH has been scoring between 25-40 ES points during his career, playing alongside diverse line mates such as Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ty Rattie, and Luke Gazdic. RNH has seen it all and never complained, continuing to play his game. This year, with a higher quality top 6 for the Oilers, it is expected that RNH will perform closer to his career average. However, it may potentially be a disadvantage for RNH as Coach Jay Woodcroft might pair up Connor and Leon more often, leaving RNH with a combination of Kane, Hyman, and Brown as his line mates. While they are still great line mates, it creates some distance between RNH and Connor/Leon during even strength play.

This Season

Power Play

In order for the Oilers power play to stay on its record-breaking pace, dominating the league, RNH is going to have to keep up with Connor and Leon’s production. The way the 1st Unit power play is set up, I don’t see any major changes that would reduce his production drastically from last season, where he scored 53 power play points. In my projection this year, having a full year of Evan Bouchard on the back end could slightly improve RNH’s totals. I project him to have 55 power play points, including 15 power play goals and 40 power play assists.

Penalty Kill

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is a major part of the Edmonton Oilers penalty kill and has averaged 4.5 points per year shorthanded over the last two years. So, projecting Nuge to score 3 points shorthanded this season doesn’t seem unreasonable – 1 goal and 2 assists shorthanded. If the Oilers’ PK is going to succeed this season, a large part of it lies in the hands of RNH. The additions of Mattias Ekholm at the trade deadline last season have also provided some stability on the back end. If players like Vincent Desharnais and Brett Kulak can elevate their game on the PK as well, the Oilers should have a much-improved special teams, leading to more regular-season success and perhaps a few less 5-4 barn burners we saw last season.

Even Strength

RNH had a lower than average performance last year in terms of even-strength scoring. This was evident in all aspects of his game. Though I am reluctant to admit it, I believe he will regress closer to his career average this season. While he will still receive ample playing time alongside talented teammates, such as McDavid and Draisaitl, I don’t think he will have the same amount of time with them as before. A more balanced roster will enable the coach to frequently load up the top line, which was not always possible in past seasons. As a result, I expect RNH to regress to a career average of around 13 even-strength goals (down from 21) and approximately 16 goals overall (down from 26).

Projection

Scoring-wise, my projection for RNH is 29-58-87 in 82 GP. It’s a fairly steep drop from his career last year (down 15 points), but still higher than any other season in his career, largely due to the continued success of the Oilers’ daunting power play.

Next Up

Ryan Mcleod.