Canucks Defeat Oilers at BetLM

Canucks Defeat Oilers

EDMONTON – Get a place, kid.

Ryan Nugent-Hopkins took the deci­sion out of management’s hands on Sat­ur­day night at Rex­all Place.

On a Hockey Night In Canada cen­tre stage against the West­ern Con­fer­ence cham­pion Van­cou­ver Canucks, the 18-year-old rookie guar­an­teed he’ll spend the sea­son with the Edmon­ton Oil­ers, scor­ing his sec­ond, third and fourth goals of the sea­son in a history-making nat­ural hat-trick performance.

The team still needs work, though, los­ing 4–3, but Nugent-Hopkins ended the junior debate.

“It def­i­nitely is excit­ing,” said the 2011 first pick over­all, who has sniped four of Edmonton’s five goals on the season.

“I def­i­nitely didn’t expect to have this kind of start. I just want to keep it going, hopefully.”

Bril­liant

In one bril­liant evening, The Nuge made 16,839 fans scream their lungs out, while at the same time shut­ting the mouths of those who thought he should spend this sea­son with the Red Deer Rebels.

Line­mate and fel­low No.1 pick Tay­lor Hall knew Hop­kins was good — but he didn’t expect him to be this good, this fast.

“It’s def­i­nitely a bet­ter intro­duc­tion than I had last year,” Hall said.

“It took me eight games to score my first … and he has four in his first three.

“It’s a big jump for our team to have that extra cen­tre­man in there to really push the pace. For me and Ebs to play with him has been a lot of fun.”

Jor­dan Eberle, who com­pleted a Kid Line that took own­er­ship of the hockey club right before Edmonton’s eyes — reg­is­ter­ing seven points and post­ing 14 of Edmonton’s 30 shots in the loss — is equally amazed.

“If you ask him, he’ll say he’s prob­a­bly ner­vous … but he doesn’t look it at all out there,” said Eberle.

“He plays with a lot of poise and that’s great, that’s what you need when you’re a young kid. That’s his biggest strength, his abil­ity to slow the game down and make plays.

“He’s going to con­tinue to do that and con­tinue to get better.”

That’s a scary thought, given how good he is right now.

And the impres­sive part is that Nugent-Hopkins goes to the tough areas to find his goals.

“A key mes­sage from the coaches is always go hard into the blue paint,” he said. “I’ve been try­ing to do that, and so far it’s pay­ing off.”

“He’s found a nice lit­tle spot in front of the net to bang away at goals,” said Hall.

“When you’re around the net and you have good tim­ing and you get those chances at pucks, you’re going to get a lot of goals.

“He’s highly regarded as a passer, but it’s nice to see him get goals.”

Nugent-Hopkins scored twice in the first period: once on his own rebound and once on a long deflec­tion that only he and Stephen Hawk­ing had the vision to see.

He added his third goal late in the sec­ond frame, a shot that found its way through traf­fic and crossed the line a mil­lisec­ond — accord­ing the NHL reviews — before Hall poked away at it.

“I really didn’t know, and Tay­lor said he didn’t really know either,” said Nugent-Hopkns.

Excited

“Either way, it went in and we were both really excited.”

“It’s prob­a­bly bet­ter that they gave it to him,” said Hall.

“It’s his third NHL game, he got a hat-trick against his home town team and Luongo, against guys he’s watched for a long time.

“It’s great to see.”

The rink, of course, went ballistic.

Unsure of who actu­ally scored, the Oil­ers faith­ful held on to their hats until the announce­ment — then show­ered the ice in the mid­dle of the next shift, forc­ing play to be blown dead so they could prop­erly mark the his­toric occasion.

“That def­i­nitely took me by sur­prise,” said Nugent-Hopkins.

LATE HITS: Ales Hem­sky has a sprained shoul­der and will be out for about two weeks … Darcy Hordichuk hurt his knee five sec­onds into his first shift. They’re say­ing any­where between 10 days and four weeks … Next action for the Oil­ers in Mon­day night, when they host the Nashville Predators.

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