Nugent-Hopkins is hurt and will miss Edmonton Oilers home opener
The Edmonton Oilers got some bad news on the morning of their season opener.
Head coach Mike Babcock confirmed on Tuesday morning that Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will not be available for tonight’s home opener against the Vancouver Canucks.
Nugent-Hopkins left Monday’s practice early after suffering a lower-body injury during the skate.
“Nuge isn’t available tonight,” Babcock told reporters. “Not a 100 per cent [on timeline]… anytime they tell me day-to-day, that usually means two weeks is what I go by.”
"We're gonna take a step a day, keep grinding & try to get better. We still have a lot of things to get better at but we liked our first 11 days."
Coach Babcock on the #Oilers focus going into game one of the regular season. @Enterprise | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/t2ctch47jo
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) September 29, 2026
The longest-tenured Oilers player was expected to centre the second line tonight, but the team will now have to scramble to find out how to deal with his absence on short notice.
Apart from being a key top-six player, Nugent-Hopkins was also a critical member of the Oilers’ top power-play unit. Babcock said that Vasily Podkolzin will fill in on that unit to start the season.
Not having Nugent-Hopkins in the lineup will mean some drastic changes will be coming to the top-six to open up the season. Babcock seemed open to the idea of splitting up Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl onto separate lines, rather than keeping them together on the top line as initially planned.
That would help create depth down the middle and prevent the Oilers from shoehorning a bottom-six player like Trent Frederic, Colton Dach, or Owen Michaels into a top-six role without any preparation.
Separating McDavid and Draisaitl would also require a bit of shuffling among top-six wingers. Perhaps we could see something similar to the following line combinations when the puck drops against the Canucks:
Isaac Howard – Connor McDavid – Zach Hyman
Vasily Podkolzin – Leon Draisaitl – Kasperi KapanenĀ
That configuration would reunite McDavid with Hyman, who have proven to have tons of chemistry together over the years. It would also reacquaint Draisaitl with Podkolzin and Kapanen, who were a trio that had a lot of success in the playoffs last season.
It didn’t take long for things to go sideways for the Oilers, and it’ll be the first real test for Babcock behind the Oilers’ bench.
We’ll see how it all shakes out when the puck drops on the season at 8 p.m. MDT.