Music: {allcanada} Nugent-Hopkins having career season for Oilers, dreaming of playoff run

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It was unlike anything Ryan Nugent-Hopkins had ever experienced, a reminder of all he had worked for, all these years, of all he had wished for when he entered the NHL on that now long-ago day.

He had tasted the Stanley Cup Playoffs, sure. The Edmonton Oilers made the Western Conference Second Round back in 2017 but missed the playoffs the following two seasons. Then they lost in the Qualifying Round in 2020 and the first round in 2021.

But this? This was different. This was a revelation.

The Oilers made the Western Conference Final in 2022, getting swept by the eventual Stanley Cup winning Colorado Avalanche. And, in Nugent-Hopkins, it served as a push -- that even 11 seasons into an NHL career, even at 29 years old, he could be more.

"You get a little taste of it and you definitely want more," Nugent-Hopkins said. "You want to keep improving. I think that's kind of ignited the fuel in a lot of our bellies."

It shows.

Nugent-Hopkins is hitting new heights, with NHL career highs in goals (34), assists (57) and points (91), earning looks that have largely shifted from the stalwart Nugent-Hopkins to shinier, flashier teammates like Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, all of which has helped the Oilers (42-23-9) to third place in the Pacific Division.

They are three points behind the second-place Los Angeles Kings and have a chance to close the five-point gap between them and the first-place Vegas Golden Knights when the two teams face off at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas on Tuesday (10 p.m. ET; ESPN+, HULU, TVAS, SN1).

"I see somebody whose game has evolved," Oilers coach Jay Woodcroft said. "I saw someone last year go on a deep playoff run for the first time and get a taste of hockey in the month of May and in the month of June and someone who's driven to be the best that he can be."

The 29-year old's previous NHL career highs all came in 2018-19, when he had 28 goals, 41 assists and 69 points in 82 games. And he's getting hot at the right time, carrying an eight-game point streak into Tuesday. In that streak, he has 13 points (four goals, nine assists), including the game-winning goal, and an assist, in the Oilers' 5-4 win against the Arizona Coyotes on Monday.

Nugent-Hopkins is scoring on 18.8 percent of his shots, a far cry from the 7.1 percent of his shots he scored on in 2021-22, when he had 50 points (11 goals, 39 assists).

"I don't know if I was disappointed with the year I had last year, but I definitely wanted to improve on it and bear down a little bit more," he said. "Getting into the playoffs kind of ignited that a little bit. Just came into this season with the mindset of wanting to help on the offensive side of things a little bit more. So far, it's worked out."

It's not easy to stand out on a team that boasts the top two scorers in the NHL in McDavid (140 points) and Draisaitl (114 points). It's not easy to make headlines for offense, to draw interest away. And yet there is Nugent-Hopkins, tied for ninth in the NHL in scoring with Dallas Stars forward Jason Robertson.

"I've seen things this year that I maybe hadn't seen before in my first stint as an assistant coach or when I came up last year," Woodcroft said. "He plays in every situation; he touches a lot of parts of the game. He plays both wing and center. He's spent a lot of time working on his shot. I'm quite pleased. We have a lot of guys on pace for career years offensively and to do it at his age, I'm proud of that."

For Dave Tippett, who coached the Oilers from 2019-22, it was always the trust that he could put in Nugent-Hopkins that stood out, the ability to be sure that at least one player would do exactly what he needed to do when he needed to do it, whether that was on the ice or off it.

Tippett had first come across the forward as a coach for Team North America at the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, when Nugent-Hopkins was among the oldest and most experienced on the high-flying roster of players under age 23 from Canada and the United States.

"The first time that I actually recognized how good of a player he was is at the World Cup," Tippett said. "I was running the penalty kill for that team and he was one of our main killers and you really got to see his smarts and how he goes about thinking the game.

"With 'Nuge,' his hockey sense is elite. He reads situations, so a coach can rely on him in those situations. He's got excellent skill level. Where some players can think the game real well but they can't execute enough to get it done enough times, and Nuge has the skill level to get things done."

For Tippett, one of the main benefits of Nugent-Hopkins as a player was his well-roundedness, the value coming from that package of skills. It was never necessarily about his offense numbers. But this season, Nugent-Hopkins has made those pop.

"When I say I'm growing my game, people think you should have been growing it by now," Nugent-Hopkins said.

But sometimes things just come together at the right time.

"He's always been a great player since I've been in the League and been watching him," forward Derek Ryan said. "I think he's definitely an elite shooter and he's shooting the puck more this year than I've seen before and he's putting himself in situations to score.

"He's always been an elite playmaker -- he fits in that mold on that power play unit just because he's so good at making those small little plays, finding guys that are open, passing through sticks -- but I've just seen him find space and shoot more this year."

Ultimately, Tippett said, what has made Nugent-Hopkins so special this year and previously is his role as the glue that holds the team together, the kind of player who can play anywhere in the lineup and fit in, the kind of player that every team wants.

"There's people that just touch a lot of different parts of the game and he's one of those players," Tippett said. "He's a guy that just quietly goes about his business and there's nothing really sensational about what he does, but he does everything well."

And when that kind of player reaches top-10 status in the points race? Watch out.
Over Nugent-Hopkins' 11 previous seasons with the Oilers, who selected him No. 1 in the 2011 NHL Draft, there have been only those four trips to the playoffs. Which means that seven times, the forward and his teammates have finished the season too early.

"Obviously we've been to the playoffs before, but you get knocked out first round and you've got to restart it again the [next] season," Nugent-Hopkins said. "Just getting down to the last four teams in the League, you realize how possible it is, how close we got last year -- and still there's two more rounds that we needed to win.

"A lot of the guys in there felt it too. It just makes you excited to come back the next year and do this again, start making that push, really starting from day one and making sure that we give ourselves the opportunity to get that chance again."

That's the plan. That's the mindset. That's where all the goals and all the assists and all the energy has come from. Nugent-Hopkins has a renewed focus and a renewed life, even in his 12th season in the NHL.

He's pushing himself. He's pushing the Oilers. Even if you're not watching him, he's there.

"He flies under the radar," Woodcroft said. "But he's certainly appreciated by the coaching staff and his teammates. I think for him to dig in and try and grow his game, I think it speaks a lot about the person and his focus. I go back to the run we had last year. I think he's driven to build on that run.

"He wants to win."

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