Chicago Blackhawks: Analyzing every No. 1 pick since Patrick Kane

Yep, for the second year in a row, the Edmonton Oilers won the NHL Draft Lottery. What a bunch of lucky guys right? They are going to get so good so quickly. Well, at least that is what you would have thought when they drafted Ryan Nugent-Hopkins with the first overall pick in the 2011 NHL Draft. They were finally starting to build a nice little core of good players up there in Edmonton so maybe they can finally stop being terrible.

Well, Nugent-Hopkins has been a great player for them. He isn’t the most offensively gifted player in the NHL but he does okay in that department too. Where he really shines is being a two-way centerman. He does all the things that help a hockey team win games but the Oilers have rarely put enough around these great players for them to be successful as a team. Nugent-Hopkins has 169 goals and 274 assists for 443 points in 604 games for Edmonton.

He has played the Hawks a bunch in his career since he is on a Western Conference team. He has four goals and 18 assists for 22 points in 24 games against them. The goal to assist ratio against the Blackhawks is very interesting. He sets up his teammates a lot when he plays Chicago. It does make a bit of sense based on who he gets to play with a lot of the time (more on that later).