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From Renney to Knoblauch: The nine head coaches of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins’ career with the Oilers
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Photo credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
Sean Panganiban
Aug 10, 2025, 12:00 EDTUpdated: Aug 10, 2025, 12:21 EDT
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Nearly 14 years have gone by since Ryan Nugent-Hopkins first suited up for the Edmonton Oilers in his NHL debut during the 2011-12 season. Moreover, it’s hard to believe that in the upcoming 2025–26 season, the still baby-faced Nugent-Hopkins — currently at 959 regular-season games — will play the 1,000th game of his NHL career.
That said, they say change is a good thing, and the 32-year-old has seen plenty of it during his time playing in Oil Country. He’s seen teammates come and go, experienced the switch from the old Northlands Coliseum to now playing at Rogers Place. If he had a dollar for every time he changed head coaches while playing for the Oilers, he’d have enough to buy a Kung Pao noodle box from Oodle Noodle. With that in mind, below we outline all of the head coaches Nugent-Hopkins has had throughout his NHL career.

Tom Renney

Nugent-Hopkins began his rookie season in 2011 under head coach Tom Renney, who was behind the Oilers’ bench from 2010 to 2012. Ahead of the 2011–12 season, Renney was debating whether the 18-year-old Nugent-Hopkins would make the lineup, having said:
“I want to give him a fair opportunity to do what he wants to do badly, and that’s to make our hockey team.”
That said, Renney put the then-rookie in the lineup for the first game of the season, where the former first-overall pick scored in his NHL debut. Renney limited Nuge’s defensive zone starts that year, and he went on to have a tremendous rookie campaign, tallying 52 points (18G, 34A) in 62 games. Despite his season ending early due to injury, he finished as the runner-up in Calder Trophy voting.
Nugent-Hopkins had Renney as a head coach for just one season, but during Renney’s overall tenure with the club, the Oilers posted a 57-85-22 record.

Ralph Krueger

Ralph Krueger began as an associate coach with the Oilers in 2010, primarily overseeing special teams, and was promoted to head coach for the 2012–13 season, which didn’t begin until January due to the NHL lockout.
Still, Krueger served as head coach during Nugent-Hopkins’ sophomore season, leading the team to a 19-22-7 record. He was fired after just over half a season on the job and later revealed that, while in Switzerland during the offseason, former Oilers GM Craig MacTavish dismissed him over Skype.
Reflecting on the many coaches he’s had in his career, Nugent-Hopkins said, “We all really liked Ralph.” He added, “Super intelligent guy. Really knew how to handle the players well, and we only had a short season with him. It was tough to lose him.” The centerman finished the 2012–13 season with 24 points in 40 games.

Dallas Eakins

After four successful seasons as head coach of the AHL’s Toronto Marlies, which included a trip to the Calder Cup Final in 2012, the Oilers hired Dallas Eakins to take over behind the bench on June 10, 2013.
Above all, Eakins implemented a system called “The Swarm,” which introduced a complex “doubling up” defensive strategy where two defenders would pressure the puck carrier. However, this often left other attackers wide open, leading to easy goals against and leaving Oilers fans dumbfounded, hands in the air asking, “What type of beer league play did I just watch?” and the former bench boss later admitted the system was a mistake.
That said, during Eakins’ first season with the club, he had high praise for Nugent-Hopkins, saying, “The thing I like about Nuge is he’s a bobblehead,” said Eakins, the first-year Oilers head coach. “I ask him to do something, and he nods his head. Not only does he nod his head, he goes and does it. That’s a good thing in my books.”
He coached the Oilers during the 2013–14 season, when Nugent-Hopkins recorded 56 points (19G, 27A) in 82 games; however, Eakins was fired midway through the 2014–15 season, as the team struggled to win games.

Todd Nelson

After Eakins was let go, GM Craig MacTavish stepped in as Oilers coach for five games (0-3-2) before the team hired Todd Nelson as an interim head coach to finish the 2014–15 season. Nelson had been head coach of the Oilers’ AHL affiliate, the Oklahoma City Barons, where he coached Nugent-Hopkins during the 2012–13 NHL lockout.
In 51 games, Nelson posted a 17-25-9 record, while Nugent-Hopkins recorded 56 points (24 G, 32 ) in 76 games that season.

Todd McLellan

Following the 2014–15 season, the Oilers hired Todd McLellan, who had parted ways with the San Jose Sharks just a month earlier after coaching them for seven seasons, making the playoffs six times and reaching the conference finals twice.
The head coach posted a 31-43-8 record in his first season behind the bench, but McLellan’s high point with the team was in 2016-17, where the Oilers went 47-26-9, securing their first playoff berth in over a decade. They advanced to the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, defeating the Sharks in the first round before falling to the Anaheim Ducks in seven games.
Edmonton missed the playoffs in 2017-18 (36-40-6) and McLellan was fired 20 games into the 2018-19 season after a 9-10-1 start. That said, McLellan, back in 2017, had compared Nugent-Hopkins’ similar traits to Joe Pavelski, having said:
“I think he’s a tremendous player. I think that the DNA that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has right now is Ryan’s DNA. He can acquire some of the instincts that Joe Pavelski has; he can play the game a certain way, but his best measuring tool is himself.”
Overall, McLellan posted a 123-119-24 record with the Oilers, while Nugent-Hopkins posted 145 points in 220 games playing under his former bench boss.

Ken Hitchcock

When the Oilers fired McLellan on November 20, 2018, they brought in Ken Hitchcock as his replacement, who was the third-winningest coach in NHL history at the time, with 823 victories before joining the club.
Hitchcock played Nugent-Hopkins down the middle on the second line, allowing him to showcase both his offensive flair and strong two-way game. Midseason, the head coach said this about his centerman:
“He’s a smaller version, for me, of (Keith) Primeau. He’s on the right side of every puck. So, whoever you play him with, you build good minutes,” said Hitchcock. “He’s a guy who can check top players, he can control things on the powerplay… He’s smaller, but he’s a lot like Joe Nieuwendyk was. Good in every aspect of the game.”
That season, Hitchcock posted a 26-28-8 record in 62 games, while Nugent-Hopkins notched 69 points, which was not only nice but also a career high at the time.

Dave Tippett

The Oilers hired Ken Holland as their General Manager in May 2019, and later that month, the former GM brought in Dave Tippett as the team’s head coach, a former Jack Adams Award winner as NHL Coach of the Year with the Phoenix Coyotes in the 2009–10 season.
In each of Tippett’s two full seasons, the Oilers made the playoffs; however, they failed to advance past the first round and managed just one win total. Additionally, during the 2021–22 season, Tippett was fired in February after the Oilers posted one of the league’s worst records since the start of the new year, going 8-13-3.
However, during his tenure with the Oilers, Tippett experimented with Nugent-Hopkins on the wing instead of his usual spot at center, often praising his versatility, saying:
“I always liked [Nugent-Hopkins], and coaching against him, you could tell he was a really smart player.” He added, “My first experience with him was at the World Cup [in 2016] on the Under-23 team that I was coaching. I knew he was a good player, but I was running the penalty kill on that team, and he was one of the guys we were using, and you’d find how really smart he is.”
Overall, Tippett posted a 95-62-14 record during his time with the Oilers, while Nugent-Hopkins tallied 112 points in 155 regular-season games under his coaching.

Jay Woodcroft

On February 10, 2022, the Oilers promoted the Oilers’ affiliate, AHL’s Bakersfield Condors head coach, Jay Woodcroft, to be the man behind the bench for the Oilers, after posting a 105-71-14 record with the Condors.
His tenure lasted parts of three seasons (2021–23), during which he posted a regular-season record of 79-41-13, which includes a 50-23-9 record in 2022–23, the Oilers’ best season since the 1980s. Under Woodcroft, Edmonton reached the Western Conference Final in 2022 and got eliminated in the second round in 2023.
He signed a three-year extension with the club in June 2022, but was fired on November 12, 2023, following a 3-9-1 start to the 2023–24 season. That said, Woodcroft had high praise for Nugent-Hopkins, saying during the 2022-23 season:
“He’s somebody who takes pride in his competition level, and I think that’s what we’re seeing this year, is how competitive Nuge is being in all situations. I’m moving him all over the lineup. He’s left wing, he’s centre, he’s playing on first-unit penalty kill, and first-unit power play.”
Nugent-Hopkins put up his most successful regular season campaign with Woodcroft behind the bench, recording 104 points in 82 games in 2022-23.

Kris Knoblauch

When Woodcroft was fired after a poor start to the 2023–24 season, the Oilers brought in Connor McDavid’s former junior coach, Kris Knoblauch, which technically made him Nugent-Hopkins’ tenth head coach in his NHL career — if you count Craig MacTavish’s brief stint during the 2014–15 season.
In Knoblauch’s first season with the Oilers, he inherited a team sitting in last place and led them to a 49-27-6 record in 2023–24, ultimately reaching the Stanley Cup Final. He followed that up with a 48-29-5 record the next season, guiding the team back to the Final for a second straight season.
In addition, during last season’s playoffs, Leon Draisaitl said that Nugent-Hopkins is “such a smart hockey player, and I think he’s probably the coach’s favourite player in the world.” And after Nuge recorded three assists in Game 3 against Dallas, his coach had this to say about him:
“You want players with flexibility — Ryan’s that kind of player,” Knoblauch said. “Any time you have a player that can do so much, as a coach, you’re very thankful for it.”
As you can see, over the years many of the coaches Nugent-Hopkins has played for have praised his versatility and strong two-way game, and we’ve seen him grow under their guidance while accomplishing plenty — being selected to the All-Star Game, reaching the 100-point plateau, and even beating up a couple of players in fights over the last few years, like Justin Holl and Sean Monahan. But one thing still remains for the longest-serving Oiler to achieve, and that’s winning a Stanley Cup — something he’ll be hoping to do under Knoblauch as early as next season.

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