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Cult of Hockey
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He’s not a perfect player. He sometimes struggles to make plays in the heavy going of even strength hockey. He can be over-powered in the defensive slot.
But his skating, passing and thinking of the game are elite.
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Overall, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has demonstrated enough skill, determination and loyalty that he’s now hunting down the heart of greatness for an Edmonton Oiler, a measure second only to Stanley Cup wins in terms of its importance to the franchise.
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This season if he can hold his spot on a top line — and that almost certainly will be the case, save for injury — RNH, now 30 years-of-age, will play his 13th straight season as one of the core players on the Oilers.
He’s tied with Mark Messier right now with 12 seasons as a core player, behind only Ryan Smyth, who played 13 seasons in the heart of the Oilers line-up, and team leader Kevin Lowe, who always made a point of making sure he fought his way into the Top 4 defence on any team he played.
Lowe played 14 seasons on the first or second pairing of the Edmonton defence.
What is a Core 12 player on an NHL team? I go by the definition set out by long-time Edmonton player agent Ritch Winter, who said in the salary cap era that NHL teams are defined by 12 players, the forwards on the top two lines, the third-line centre, the top goalie and the top two defence pairs.
That’s where the cap dollars need to be spent, as it is these 12 players who are the drivers of Stanley Cup playoff success.
The Core 12, this group is known as.
Nugent-Hopkins has been part of Edmonton’s Core 12 since he broke into the NHL in 2011-12, either playing first or second line centre or wing.
On this Oilers team, he’s the leader in Core 12 seasons, with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid at eight seasons in the Core 12 and Darnell Nurse seven.
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By the way, in ranking Core 12 players on any given Oilers team, my guideline was to focus on the team at the end of the season, especially in the playoffs when the games are most important. If a top player was injured most of the year, he wasn’t given credit for being in the Core 12 that particular season. If a player was traded away during the season, he was also not given credit.
When it comes to games played, RNH rank fifth with 801 regular season games, but with good health he’ll finish the year behind only Smyth, 971, and Lowe, 1037.
He’s got six more years on his deal here, which will give him a chance to play almost 500 more regular season games for the Oilers in that span.
Of course, the most critical aspect for any Oilers player is their contribution in the playoffs. RNH has yet to find his groove in playoff competition, but I bet he will do so.
He demonstrated increased aggression and strength in 2022-23. As long as his wheels are still good, and with ever more determination in puck battles, it’s reasonable to expect playoff success.
P.S. As I’m celebrating RNH here, I thought I’d present a blast from the past, a column I wrote for the June 18, 2011 edition of the Edmonton Journal, just as the Oilers were about to select RNH first overall:
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Destined for hockey greatness; Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will likely go to Edmonton as first overall NHL draft pick
Sat Jun 18 2011Page: A1 / FrontSection: NewsByline: David StaplesDateline: RED DEERSource: Edmonton Journal
Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, the best 18-year-old hockey player in Canada, sits in a Red Deer Boston Pizza eating jambalaya, drinking ice tea, and watching Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals.
At a nearby table, two teenage girls melt into puddles of ecstatic admiration at the sight of Nugent-Hopkins. He appears not to notice.
The sharp focus on Nugent-Hopkins, dubbed “Hoppy” by his teammates and “RNH” by the draftnicks and hockey fanatics who now track his every game and comment, is part of what Red Deer hockey folk jokingly refer to as the Hoparazzi. News reporters and fans have started to buzz around him in recent months as he has climbed the rankings to become the consensus top prospect in next week’s National Hockey League entry draft.
Nugent-Hopkins, the star centre of the Western Hockey League’s Red Deer Rebels, smiles when the subject of the Hoparazzi is raised, but makes little of the attention.
“It’s been good. It’s been fun. I just go in and try to have fun with it, just enjoy it. I don’t like to be cocky and I don’t like when hockey players get cocky and stuff. Some hockey players in the WHL are pretty cocky. I don’t like cocky people in general. I don’t like it when people are very arrogant.”
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Cam Moon, who does play-by-play for Red Deer and also handles the team’s media relations, says the hoopla hasn’t changed Nugent-Hopkins. “It’s like it’s nothing. It does not change his personality, demeanour or anything about his day. He’s one of the guys who can do two different pretty big media availabilities on game day to no effect.”
In Canada, we do one thing better than anyone else in the world -churn out world-class hockey players. Nugent-Hopkins is the latest on the assembly line.
Forged in the cauldron of elite Canadian hockey schools, programs and leagues, it’s no surprise that Nugent-Hopkins is now coolly dealing with the pressures and privileges of his top prospect status.
He’s a typical, conventional 18-year-old. He likes playing Halo and listening to Dierks Bentley. He isn’t keen on Lady Gaga.
He’s different in that he has had an agent since he was 14.
He has already represented his country at an international event, a major tournament in Slovakia last summer.
As a player, he has drawn comparisons to NHL stars Pavel Datsyuk and Matt Duchene, but the kid doesn’t carry himself like a star.
He is slender and wiry, not a Big Bobby Clobber of a hockey player and not a commanding presence. His manner is modest, but he confidently answers questions about himself. There’s no swagger about the kid, off the ice at least, but there is a calm and a maturity notable for his age and lofty position.
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Two weeks ago, Oilers GM Steve Tambellini met for a few hours with John Batchelor, Nugent-Hopkins’s old bantam coach in Burnaby, B.C. Batchelor had once coached Tambellini’s own son at the Burnaby Winter Club, a hockey hothouse.
In the meeting, Tambellini had many questions about Nugent-Hopkins, whom most expect the Oilers will take with the first overall pick.
“As I said to Steve, if you’re looking for me to say something bad about the kid, you’re looking at the wrong guy, because he is everything you want in a player and in a human being,” Batchelor says.
“You could walk into a room of 30 hockey players and you would not pick him out as the guy who is the stud. He doesn’t tell anybody. He does his talking on the ice.”
Nugent-Hopkins is the second of the two sons of Roger Hopkins, a coffee salesman, and Debbie Nugent, a nurse’s aide.
Both his brother Adam, who is five years older, and Ryan, were always strong athletically, Roger says, walking at 10 months and running at age one.
But while Adam was a good athlete, Ryan always struck his father as being exceptional, both in terms of his gifts and his commitment.
“If you saw Ryan play the outfield in baseball, you’d think he was Willie Mays. The guy is a gifted kid athletically and he’s good at whatever he’s done. On top of that, he’s got this understated drive. If you talk to Ryan, he doesn’t come across as a super aggressive guy. But he’s very, very competitive.”
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Roger remembers going out and hitting a baseball to little Ryan. “He just loved doing it. He’d be diving one side, diving the other, over his head, and he’d wear me out. I’d say, ‘I’m going.’ He’d say, ‘Oh gosh, you always quit dad.’ ”
As a child, Nugent-Hopkins watched clips of Maurice (Rocket) Richard’s play and admired his passion. “Every time he has the puck, his eyes are just huge and you can tell he has so much passion in playing. I felt a connection to him in that way. I get very into it. I’ve just always been a very competitive person in everything I’ve ever done.
“I always had a passion for the game. I always loved playing. It’s always been that one thing I’ve just loved doing.”
His parents divorced and the family never had much money, but they managed to join the private Burnaby Winter Club so Adam and Ryan could play elite hockey. There was an extra sheet of ice at the club, so when Adam was playing a game, Ryan would be out on his own, skating for a few hours.
Almost every night he would go down to the unfinished basement in his house to shoot pucks. On the wall, Roger taped targets. Ryan would try to hit them.
Roger would throw out pucks on the floor. Ryan’s task would be to keep his head and eyes up while stickhandling a golf ball around the pucks for 20 minutes.
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Roger had all kinds of time and love for his boys, but he also had high standards, as the boys found out one night when Ryan was 12 or 13.
“We were spending a lot of time, all of our money, effort and time, our heart and soul, because of their love for it,” Roger says of hockey. “But one night in particular neither of them had done what I thought was good. They just hadn’t put out, and I was always the guy who worked hard, so I wanted that from them. So I got in the car and I reamed them. I said, ‘If you think I’m spending the rest of my life where all we ever do is this and you’re not ready to put out, we’re quitting right now. Either you do it right or you get out of it.’ I was screaming at them.”
The message didn’t need to be repeated.
As Nugent-Hopkins puts it: “I try to be the hardest worker on the ice. That rubbed off from my parents.”
In 2008, Nugent Hopkins was drafted first overall in the WHL’s bantam draft by the Red Deer Rebels.
In his first year, he won the league’s rookie-of-the-year award, scoring 65 points in 67 games.
One setback came when he failed to make Canada’s under-20 team last December, but he came back from that to increase his scoring at Red Deer, putting up 31 goals and 106 points in 67 games this season.
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The challenge of balancing league games, practices, school, travel and tournaments has been good for his him, Roger says. He has matured a lot since he left home at age 15 to billet with a Red Deer family.
“He’s had a real grind and he’s learned how to cope with that,” Roger says. “The Western Hockey League humbles you.”
It’s not easy to play three games in four nights in four cities, get home on the team bus at 3 a.m. and go to school the next morning, Roger says. “You have to learn how to do that mentally.”
More recently, there have been daily requests for interviews, as well as a four-day trip to Toronto so NHL scouts could test his physical fitness and interview him.
At the same time, he has been trying to finish Grade 12. He spent this past week both training and brushing up on 1984, King Lear and Death of a Salesman for his English 30 exam. “Some parts are pretty boring,” he says of 1984, “like when the described everything about Big Brother over 50 pages.”
A month ago, his mom noticed on School-Zone that his mark had dipped below a passing grade, largely because he’d been so busy with the playoffs and road trips. “My mom called. She was not very happy. I just got some extra work and did it.”
He had brought his mark up to 60 heading into the final, he says.
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He’s now focused on weight training to build up his body so he’s better able to play the NHL’s fierce checking game. He played last season at 160 to 165 pounds, but is up to 174. His goal is to play next year at 175 to 180 pounds.
In recent years, most top picks in the NHL draft have made the jump to the big league as 18-year-olds. Nugent-Hopkins also has that in mind.
“I feel I could make the jump, and that’s my goal for next year.”
To succeed in the NHL, he needs to be stronger and bigger, says Batchelor.
“He’s probably not ready next year. I think he needs a little bit of maturation in his body. I think another year of junior would do him well.”
On the Boston Pizza TV screen, Bruins goalie Tim Thomas makes another big save.
How would he try to beat Thomas?
“I’d try to get him moving and go upstairs,” Nugent-Hopkins says. “He likes to go down when he gets across. I’d go side to side, either pass across or deke across.”
The Stanley Cup finals are far away from a Red Deer pizza place, but not for the ambitious Nugent-Hopkins. He was just in Boston, a guest of the NHL with other top prospects, where they met broadcaster Don Cherry and attended the first game of the finals.
“It’s pretty crazy to think I could be skating playing there,” Nugent-Hopkins says of the game on the TV screen. “It’s pretty cool to think about. Definitely.”
At the Cult of Hockey
McCURDY: Oilers rock like no other team in one category
STAPLES: Oil fans have Woodcroft’s back after playoff defeat. Mostly do, at least
McCURDY: Finding comparables for Evan Bouchard
STAPLES: Stu Skinner trending nicely among Canadian goalies
McCURDY: Can Oilers transform second-half magic to post-season bliss?
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