If ever you were looking for a fun way to spend a few minutes of your Friday, the video the @Edmonton Oilers just released featuring all of @Ryan Nugent-Hopkins goals from this past season is an excellent place to start.

Looking for a way to scratch the hockey itch left by the sportless existence we’re living through? Missing the Oilers? You’re in luck. This morning, the Oilers’ media team put out a compilation video of all 22 of RNH’s goals from this past season, and as you could probably expect, I was pretty excited about it. As the sitting President and CEO of the Ryan Nugent-Hopkins Booster Society, you can imagine how pumped I was to relive all of my boy’s goals and admire his wizardry that, in my humble opinion, is severely underrated around the NHL. Once Dave Tippett put him on a line with a couple of skilled players, Nuge’s production shot the moon as he was one of the top-5 most productive NHLers since the calendar flipped over to 2020. I don’t think people understand how good and quietly solid this guy is and has been for the Oilers, and I wanted to take a few minutes to acknowledge the incredible run he got himself on after he recovered from the corrective surgery that took care of an issue in his hand back in late November.

I love this video for so many reasons, but one of the major ones is that Nugent-Hopkins scores identical goals so often that you’d think goalies would have some idea of what’s coming. As he moves along in his career, Nuge has slowly started to master the art of the low, blocker-side snapshot that seems absolutely unstoppable at this point. I mean, I’m going to go ahead and ballpark that 60%+ of his 22 goals were scored with that same shot, maybe with a few slight variations in where he put it. Either way, I love everything about the way Nuge fires laser beams that give goalies such fits and then he finishes it off with the one-handed fist pump with one leg up in the air. With only one year left on his current contract, I’m hoping that the offseason (whenever that’ll be) brings with it the discussions about how Holland can extend Nugent-Hopkins and keep him in the fold for a long time to come. And honestly, with the cap expected to be flat or potentially even go down a little bit, this would be the perfect time to start the discussions on what a new deal would look like. I may be biased, but from where I blog, it’s time to figure out how we can #KeepNugeForever. Have a good weekend, everybody.

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