When the Edmonton Oilers decided to sign Ryan Nugent-Hopkins to an entry-level contract and start him off in the big leagues, I was a bit skeptical. Granted, they have a nine-game grace period to send him back down, but the general feeling seemed to be that they would keep him in the NHL or AHL this year. Sure enough, that's proving to be a good decision. Through three games, Nugent-Hopkins has 4 goals. Three of them have come in one game-- against the Oilers' division rivals the Vancouver Canucks. And his goals are not fluky. In fact, his first career goal was a prime example of quality hockey IQ. Unfortunately, Youtube seems to now forbid all embedding of hockey videos, and so I can't show off the goal. However, it can be described like this. Nuge got the puck, and took a shot from the red faceoff dot. Firstly, shooting like that in his first game as an NHLer demonstrates a strong level of confidence on the ice. After shooting, he drove to the net, through a defenseman, to follow up on his own rebound. As a defenseman tried to box him out, he slipped past the check, and put the puck over the glove of Marc-Andre Fleury with a sharp backhand shot.
If this is for real, and Nugent-Hopkins is already ready to be the first line center for the Oilers. This is going to be a very exciting season for the Oil. Devan Dubnyk is, in my opinion, a very competent goalie, and he has a good mentor in Nik Khabibulin who, despite his current lack of prowess, used to be quite the goalie. Taylor Hall, Magnus Pajaarvi-Svenson, and Jordan Eberle form the trifecta of exciting sophomore forwards heading into this season. I suppose you could also put Linus Omark in that category. There are also veterans like Shawn Horcoff, Ales Hemsky, and Ryan Smyth there to help foster the young talent. On the back end, the defense is anchored by Ryan Whitney, who, prior to his injury last season, was playing at a Norris Trophy worthy level. They also have the forgotten former Blackhawk Cam Barker, along with veteran Andy Sutton...alright so essentially the defensive corps is garbage. The defense is probably going to be the thing that holds the Oilers back from being a middle of the pack team. However, once they shore up that defensive corps (perhaps by shipping away Sam Gagner, who is being totally wasted on that roster), they have the potential to be competitive, even this season.
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