January 19, 2026 by Ryan Lotsberg

Let me take you back to the summer of 2011. In preparation for the 2012 World Junior Championship in Edmonton and Calgary, Edmonton hosted a summer camp for Team Canada hopefuls. Among the invites to that camp was 2011 first overall pick Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. It was a team that he was never going to be a part of because he was destined for the NHL that fall.

That Team Canada summer camp was Edmonton Oilers fans’ first opportunity to get a look at their newly selected first overall pick. I went to Rexall Place to watch a Team Canada summer camp practice that was open to fans. I remember “Nugent-Hopkins” chants reverberating off the walls in the tunnel on the way to the LRT afterwards.

The Oilers had received their second consecutive first overall pick after finishing dead last in the NHL standings the previous two seasons. Oilers fans were running on HOPE (if you know, you know), and Nugent-Hopkins gave them another reason to be hopeful.

It didn’t take long for Nugent-Hopkins to make an impact as he scored in his first NHL game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on October 9, 2011. In his third game, he got his first NHL hat trick against his hometown Vancouver Canucks. Nugent-Hopkins ended up being tied with Gabriel Landeskog, the man selected immediately after him in the 2011 NHL draft and who won the 2011-12 Calder Trophy, for the most points among NHL rookies in the 2011-12 season.

1,000 games later, Nugent-Hopkins has become an Oilers legend and a franchise icon. He’s the first player to reach 1,000 games solely in an Oilers uniform. As teammate Zach Hyman put it after Nugent-Hopkins reached the 1,000 game milestone on Sunday, he could be the “most beloved Oiler of all-time”.

Nugent-Hopkins endured the darkest years of the Decade of Darkness. He didn’t get a taste of NHL playoff hockey until his sixth NHL season, and the Oilers missed the playoffs in seven of his first eight seasons. He has played for nine different NHL coaches and seven different general managers with the Oilers thus far.

That early misery made it all the sweeter when he scored the game-winning goal in Game 4 of the second round against the Calgary Flames to put the Oilers up 3-1 in that series and he got to hear the madness outside of the Hall of Fame room during his post-game press conference. It made it sweeter to see him play in his first Western Conference Final in 2022, and even sweeter to see him play in the last two Stanley Cup Finals. The ultimate goal still eludes him and the Oilers, but it will be an unbelievable moment when that moment finally comes.

Leon Draisaitl has accused Nugent-Hopkins of being the coach’s favourite player many times with good reason. Nugent-Hopkins is an essential part of every facet of the game for the Oilers. He can do anything asked of him expertly. He can complement the best player in the world as a winger, and he can centre his own line when called upon. Draisaitl and Connor McDavid collect most of the points on the powerplay, but the powerplay truly runs through Nugent-Hopkins. He has always been regarded as a powerplay wizard, and we’ve seen evidence of that as he has been instrumental in the Oilers powerplay being the best in the league this decade. Nugent-Hopkins has been a mainstay on the Oilers penalty kill for many years as well.

Related: Nugent-Hopkins: The coach’s favourite player

According to StatMuse, the Oilers have a 498-399-103 record with Nugent-Hopkins in the lineup, which equates to a .550 points percentage. Without Nugent-Hopkins, that points percentage falls to .433 (48-65-14). That quantifies just how important Nugent-Hopkins is to the success of the Oilers.

Related: The Oilers continue to miss Nugent-Hopkins

Nugent-Hopkins has 283 goals and 505 assists for 788 points in his 1,000 NHL games. That includes a 104-point season in 2022-23. He became the 63rd player to score a goal in his 1,000th NHL game, and just the tenth to score in his first NHL game and his 1,000th NHL game. The fact that it ended up being a game-winner in a 5-0 rout was just icing on the cake.

Despite all the misery of the first eight years of his career and never even being the most highly touted first overall pick on his own team, he has never complained. There have never been any rumours about him wanting to leave Edmonton. He has never pouted in the media. He has just gone about his business like a true professional. The fact that Nugent-Hopkins committed fifteen seasons to the Oilers despite how awful the team was in the early days of his career is a testament to his character and his love for the city of Edmonton.

When you see all the video tributes from current and former teammates, you can see just how loved Nugent-Hopkins is. Being in attendance for his 1,000th game and hearing the crowd yell “NUUUUUUUUUUUUGE” whenever given the chance and hearing the “Nugent-Hopkins” chants echoing throughout Rogers Place during his last two shifts of the game shows how beloved he is by Oilers fans.

Nugent-Hopkins has become everything we could’ve hoped he could be when we were chanting his name in the gallows of the Coliseum LRT station back in 2011.

Congratulations on 1,000 games Ryan, and I hope there are many more to come!