What does a successful 2025-26 season look like for Oilers’ Ryan Nugent-Hopkins?

It’s hard to believe, with the 2025-26 season upon us, that this will be Edmonton Oilers forward Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ 15th NHL season. To put that into perspective, when the former first-overall pick first joined the league back in 2011, Oilers’ youngster Matt Savoie had probably just started Timbits hockey and still needed help tying his skates.

That said, somewhere along the way, Nugent-Hopkins must’ve sipped from the fountain of youth, because almost 15 years after being drafted, he’s not only aged gracefully but also continues to make an impact in almost every facet of the game. With that in mind, below we take a look at what a successful 2025-26 campaign could look like for the longest-serving Oiler.

Continue Being the Oilers’ Best Jack-of-All-Trades Player

Among the things you can always count on from Nugent-Hopkins, year in and year out, are his patented low-blocker snipes throughout the season and the overall versatility he brings to the team. Few Oilers wear as many hats as he does.

He plays center, wing and plays on both special teams, and if there was ever a need for an emergency Zamboni driver at Rogers Place, I’d imagine he’d step in for that role in a pinch as well. Speaking of special teams, not only will he remain an integral part of the power-play unit — hopefully improving on last season’s 12th-ranked 23.7% PP — but he’ll also be leaned on more heavily this upcoming season on the penalty kill.

Nugent-Hopkins played the most shorthanded minutes last regular season of any Oiler (134:52), and with Connor Brown, who played the second-most PK minutes (129:54), now gone, there’s a hole on the penalty kill that needs to be filled. The Burnaby, BC native will have to step up again, either by taking on more minutes himself or by mentoring whichever new players join the unit, and hopefully he can help his team improve on the 78% PK they achieved last season, and fingers crossed they can creep into the 80% range, which would put them around a top-10 spot in the league.

In August, I wrote a piece about all the coaches Nugent-Hopkins has played for during his tenure with the Oilers, and one quote that really stood out came from former Oilers’ head coach Dallas Eakins, who said the former first overall pick simply does what’s asked of him, saying, “The thing I like about Nuge is he’s a bobblehead,” He added, “I ask him to do something, and he nods his head. Not only does he nod his head, he goes and does it.”

That Eakins quote was from 2013, and almost 12 years later, the now 32-year-old Oiler still seems to just nod his head whenever he’s asked to do something. That said, in the upcoming season,  Jason Gregor recently noted that Nugent-Hopkins will spend most of his time down the middle, likely at the request of his coaches, having said:

“I think Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will spend more time as a centre than a winger this season. He will be the third-line centre mainly, except for when head coach Kris Knoblauch plays McDavid with Leon Draisaitl, which I think will be less than last season if players remain healthy.”

I’ll admit, before last season, I thought Nugent-Hopkins’ best days as a centerman were behind him. However, there were stretches when he played down the middle last season that were among his most productive (which I’ll go into in more detail in the next section). Overall, part of his success this season will come from a familiar role — being the Swiss Army knife the Oilers can rely on in practically any situation.

How Many Points Will Make Nugent-Hopkins’ Season a Success?

Since he put up 104 points in 2022-23, Nugent-Hopkins’ points per game (PPG) has slipped from 0.84 to 0.63 last season, where he tallied 49 points. Of course, the Burnaby, BC native brings more than points to the table, but his drop in points is a tad concerning, as Zach Laing summarized his offence in his end-of-season review, saying, “His individual impacts did take a hit this season. According to Hockey Viz, he drove offence at a five percent rate below league average.”

Of Nugent-Hopkins’ 49 points last season, 20 came on the power play, which was a slight drop from the previous season, when 26 of his 67 points came with the man advantage. Additionally, the linemates he played most with at 5-on-5 last season were Zach Hyman (471:31) and Connor McDavid (440:28). This means that despite spending the bulk of his minutes alongside the best player in the world, McDavid, his point production still took a hit. Having said that, one might conclude that the 32-year-old is in the downswing of his career and he’s now perhaps a 40–45 point player.

But hold on a second.

As Gregor noted, the longest-serving Oiler is expected to spend more time down the middle this season. Last March, he had a 13-game stretch playing center where he was quite productive, with Vasily Podkolzin and Viktor Arvidsson as his primary wingers, and tallied 10 points in that span, which included scoring a hat trick against the Seattle Kraken on March 22.