FEATURE: Nugent-Hopkins' never-quit attitude propels Oilers in playoffs

EDMONTON, AB – It's game day. The air inside the arena hums with that particular Stanley Cup Final electricity – a frantic, joyous, terrified energy. And there, just outside the Edmonton Oilers dressing room, stands Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.

Between sniffles – an earned byproduct of a rigorous 20-minute morning skate – he is, as always, patient. One by one, his teammates slip past, disappearing into the sanctuary of their room. Their space. Their war room. A place to find a little peace before the storm.

He watches them go, and you can see it, clear as day on his face: he'd rather be in there, soaking in the chirps and the nervous energy, than standing here in full gear, hockey's tools of the trade, feeling a little like tools of torture, waiting for a reporter to fumble with an iPhone. Because, really, surgeons don't give quotes seconds before scrubbing in. Airline pilots, we certainly hope, don't read text messages just before the wheels touch down.

So why should a guy with the weight of a city on his shoulder pads, a little over seven hours before puck drop in the Stanley Cup Final, have to wait for Voice Memos to engage? But he waits. Because waiting, you see, is something Nugent-Hopkins hasn't only accepted during his 14 years as an Oiler. He has embraced it. And now, with all the marbles on the table, the fella they call Nuge is at the absolute top of his game.

Later that night, he played 31 shifts, good for 25:45 of lung-burning ice time in Game 2 vs. Florida.

When you ask him about the guys on the team experiencing this wild, nerve-wracking ride for the first time, he almost chuckles. "Definitely wanna enjoy your teammates. You're going through it with your teammates and they get pretty, pretty antsy," he says, a small smile forming. "So it's a lot of fun to to see them experience it too."

Those teammates are taking notice. Especially after the way the Oilers dispatched the Dallas Stars in five games in the Western Conference Final on the strength of his two goals and seven assists.

"He was the best player in this series," teammate Leon Draisaitl said after Game 5. "He touches every part of the game you can think of," Draisaitl continued. "Nuggy, in a way, sacrifices a lot of offence throughout the year for doing everything the right way... Doing all the little things that a lot of guys don't want to do. We all know that he's capable of putting up numbers."

Fourteen years, a whole career in this hockey racket, can feel like a lifetime. Or three. Especially here, in Edmonton. You see a whole lot in that time. You see coaches come and go: Tom Renney, Ralph Krueger, Dallas Eakins, Todd Nelson, Todd McClellan, Ken Hitchcock, Dave Tippett, Jay Woodcroft, and now Kris Knoblauch. You see teammates arrive, their gear bags new and their faces full of hope, and then you see them pack those same bags, shipped out for a player-to-be-named-later and a prayer.

You see a grand new arena, Rogers Place, a puck palace of shimmering glass and steel, rise from a dusty, forgotten downtown railyard. You see the whole city change right before your eyes. And if you're RNH, you see the dark, painful, long, deep hockey darkness. And you just... stay. You stay. And you work. And it pays dividends.

When asked what he's most proud of, he doesn't discuss his 104-point season in 2022-23 or any personal milestone. He talks about collective character. "I think what we're most proud of is the way that our team just fights," he says, his voice steady. "I mean, we just don't quit on each other. We wanna keep pushing each other."

He's been around so long he feels like a neighbour – the kind of guy you'd trust to watch your dog. Quiet. Unassuming. And for a good long while, maybe a little underestimated. He was the first-overall pick way back in 2011, a kid from Burnaby with sublime hockey sense, pegged as a whisper of a saviour for a team so very tired of losing. He had a look like he probably still got asked for I.D. on a regular basis. But on the ice, he was all smarts, all vision.

Down in Red Deer with the WHL's Rebels, he was a magician, making pucks appear on sticks where, a second before, there was only open ice. Seventy-five assists in his final year of junior? That's not a season; it's a statement.

He came to Edmonton, and the losing didn't stop. They called it the "Decade of Darkness" and it wasn't just a catchy media phrase. It was a grind. A long, slow crawl through hockey's bleakest territory. And Nuge? He just stayed. He kept his head down and kept working. He learned to kill penalties with a surgeon's precision.

He became the guy you put on the ice with the big guns, with Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, to make them even better. He became the guy who, moments after the Oilers won the 2015 NHL Draft Lottery, reached out to a teenage McDavid. "He was one of the first people to ever reach out from the organization," the captain recalled. "He had sent me a text. I thought that was awesome... definitely means a lot. We've been teammates for a long time and been through it all together."

He's the bass player in the band. Not the lead singer, but without him, there's no music. Just a whole lot of noise. And now? Well, now it's different. This crazy, beautiful, heart-in-your-throat playoff ride – it's like the whole city is breathing again. And Nuge – Oil Country's Nuge – has been a quiet storm, exploding with huge goals and even bigger plays.

He's more than just a hockey player. Alongside his wife, Breanne, he does incredible, important work for Cystic Fibrosis Canada – compassion that earned him the King Charles III Coronation Medal. It tells you about the man.

Fourteen years. That's a long time to wait for the sun to come out. The spotlight loves the coast-to-coast rushes and the booming one-timers. And that's fine. But just for a second, watch the quiet guy. The one who has been here through all of it. The one who welcomed the future, and then stayed to build it.

That's Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. The longest-serving Oiler. The guy who stayed. The heart. The quiet, steady, never-wavering heart of it all. And right now, it's beating stronger than ever.