In just a few short hours, the Edmonton Oilers will honour Ryan Nugent-Hopkins ahead of his 1,000th game.

We’ve been celebrating Nuge Week the last number of days, leading up to tonight’s game against the St. Louis Blues.

Jason Gregor did a great one-on-one interview with Nugent-Hopkins this week, while there’s a plethora of other things touched on, like his biggest milestones, his top 10 moments, to Baggedmilk singing praise and even some quotes from his former teammate Ryan Jones.

To cap off the week, I polled some Oilersnation writers about their favourite Nugent-Hopkins memories.

Baggedmilk: My favourite Nuge memory has to be when he scored his first career hat trick in only his third NHL game. Being from Burnaby, Nugent-Hopkins had to be fired up to play his hometown Canucks, and to have him pop three goals against them was the first step toward my career-long love for the guy. At that point, Nuge looked like he could still be playing Bantam, but he had this quiet wizardry about him that really landed for me in a big way. And even though that hat trick came all the way back on October 15th, 2011, it was undoubtedly the moment when I thought that this was my guy. He’s not the biggest player on the ice, and he’s not always the most skilled, but the way he developed into a Swiss Army Knife for the franchise and the 200 head coaches he’s played for is nothing short of amazing. The guy is criminally underrated, and I very much look forward to writing countless more articles to sing his praises. I love the guy, and have since Steve Tambellini called his name out with the first overall pick.

Caprice St. Pierre: Ryan Nugent-Hopkins hits 1,000 games Sunday, and while there are plenty of highlights to choose from, let’s talk about the real defining moment: that time he fought Justin Holl. Nobody likes the Leafs, and apparently that includes Nugent-Hopkins.

It was February 27, 2021. Oilers versus Maple Leafs. Justin Holl took a run at someone, and Nuge decided he’d had enough. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins — the soft-spoken, mild-mannered center who avoids the penalty box — dropped the gloves.

Was it a technical masterpiece? No. But that’s not the point. The point is that Nugent-Hopkins, a guy who’d rather make a perfect pass than throw a punch, decided someone needed to answer, and he was going to be that guy. Nobody expected it. Nugent-Hopkins doesn’t fight, or he only does every odd year or so. He just quietly goes about his business. But that night, something snapped.

Almost 1,000 games, Nugent-Hopkins has been a lot of things: a first overall pick, a top-line center, a leader. But for one glorious moment, he fought Justin Holl because someone needed to. That’s the moment we’ll remember. Because nobody likes the Leafs.

Liam Horrobin: His entire tenure as an Oiler is my favourite memory, but to be more specific, I’ll go with when he scored his 100th point of the season against the Anaheim Ducks It was just so unexpected after what we’d seen him do throughout his career. That season he so dynamite and the closer we got to the goal the more exciting it got. I love how the Oilers players recognize the moments too and you could see the excitement they had for him in that celebration. Sunday is going to be a special moment in the franchises history. We get to honour a player that stayed with us through thick and thin. He’ll always be loved in Edmonton.

Tyler Yaremchuk: Mine comes from the 2021-22 playoff run and that unforgettable Battle of Alberta series. In Game 4, with the Oilers leading that series 2-1, I’ll never forget how quiet that building got after Mike Smith gave up that brutal goal from centre ice. In that series, we didn’t have the confidence as a fan base that the back-to-back trips to the Stanley Cup Final had given us, and when that happened, I just remember thinking that was going to be the moment that flipped this series and cost the Oilers their season. I was in full-on doomsday mode, and I suspect a lot of the fan base was too.

Then, just over five minutes later, Nugent-Hopkins gave the Oilers back their lead with a clutch goal, his second of the game. Edmonton held on and finished the series off just a few nights later in Calgary.

In the moment, I remember being so happy that after years of being on basement-dwelling teams and going through all the different coach firings without ever asking out, even though it would have been more than justified, ‘The Nuge’ finally had his big playoff moment.

Looking back on it now, what if he doesn’t score that goal? Does the series end differently? What kind of domino effect does it have? We’ll never know because #93 stepped up at a massive time.

Michael Menzies: Two honourable mention moments. First, his hat-trick in just the third game of his NHL career on Hockey Night in Canada against the Vancouver Canucks. How cool was that? Nugent-Hopkins was a points machine out of the gates of his career. The other is him coming back to play in the World Juniors as team captain despite playing 62 NHL games already. The mini lockout left a void of meaningful hockey night-to-night, and that tournament was a beauty. I remember waking up in the middle of the night to watch the games in Russia. Although the tourney was disappointing for Canada, finishing fourth, Nuge was a dawg and scored 15 points in six games. No biggie.

The top moment for me is Game 4 of the second round series against the Calgary Flames where Nuge turned what could’ve been an all-time ugly Oilers moment into just a mini, funny footnote. The Oilers entered Game 4 up 2-1 in the series. Nuge scored just 21 seconds into the game and got Edmonton going to an eventual 3-0 lead. The Flames clawed back and then tied the game on one of the most gutwrenching moments. Rasmus Andersson scored from his own zone on a slap shot that Mike Smith just didn’t see. I was in the building. Looking around, everyone had the same WTF look on their faces.

Fear not. Nugent-Hopkins buried home the game-winner off of a Tyson Barrie, digging away at the front of the net, and burying Calgary. The Oilers would win Game 5 and defeat the Flames. Nuge was not the star in this series with the sheer volume of points Draisaitl and McDavid churned, but this was a classic example of a “Nuge game.” He provided when the team needed most, and who knows what happens in that series if the Flames find a way to win it.

It gave the Oilers real legitimacy as a team no longer dogged by playoff disappointments, but a team threatening to win the Stanley Cup. Especially because I was lucky enough to attend, this is the moment I think of most for Nuge. To the next 1000 games!

Zach Laing: There are so many. His hat trick in his third game was such a cool start to his rookie season, and beyond all of his legendary fights, I wouldn’t say there’s one moment, in particular, that stands out above the rest. But whenever I think of Nugent-Hopkins, I think of the growth he’s shown as a player over the last 15 years.

When he broke into the league, he was an undersized centre who was put right on the Oilers’ top line immediately. Night in and night out, he faced some of the toughest competition imaginable and found a way to battle with the likes of Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Pavel Datsyuk, Corey Perry, the Sedin brothers, Anze Kopitar and a litany of others.

The results weren’t always pretty, but sometimes they were. Over his first three years, he outscored Daniel Sedin 4-1 and Henrik 3-1 in 57 and 50 minutes, Thornton 3-2 in 54 minutes, Marleau 8-0 in 76 minutes, and broke even against Datsyuk 0-0 in 42 minutes.

He was never shy from getting into the corners with these big boys, and it made him such a better player in the long-run. Now, 15 years later, he’s found a tremendous role on the Oilers on the top line with Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman, as well as a special teams specialist.

Zach Laing is Oilersnation’s managing editor, and The Nation Network’s news director. He also makes up one-half of the Daily Faceoff DFS Hockey Report. He can be followed on X at @zjlaing, or reached by email at zach.laing@bettercollective.com.