The kid is all right.
The Vancouver Canucks managed to spoil a terrific performance by Oilers rookie Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who registered his first NHL hat trick on Saturday night.
Defenceman Sami Salo scored the winner with his second of the night at 7:47 of the third period as the Canucks beat Edmonton 4-3 at Rexall Place.
The real story Saturday night was Nugent-Hopkins, the 18-year-old from Burnaby who was the first overall pick in this summer's NHL draft. He scored a pair of power-play goals and added another at even strength. He now has four goals in his first three NHL games and there seems little chance the Oilers will be returning him to his junior team in Red Deer.
Last year's No. 1 pick, Oiler winger Taylor Hall, needed eight games to score his first NHL goal.
Nugent-Hopkins skated on a line dubbed the Brat Pack with Hall and Jordan Eberle.
"You've got to give credit to the Oilers and especially their young line," said Vancouver coach Alain Vigneault. "They were all over the place, it was a phenomenal (second) period by three young kids that all have a great skill set and a lot of speed and a lot of competitiveness. They really outplayed us in that second period.
Nugent-Hopkins got his first when he took a back-door pass from Eberle and beat Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo on his own rebound at 13:44 of the first on an Oiler power play.
He made it 2-1 with 29 seconds left in the first when he skated out of the corner and tipped a Tom Gilbert point shot past Luongo.
Nugent-Hopkins got credit for Edmonton's third goal, on the power play, at 16:37 of the second. It came on a goal-mouth scramble and everyone in the building other than the officials thought Hall had put the puck over the goal line. But when Nugent-Hopkins was announced as the goal-scorer, the crowd at Rexall Place went nuts and littered the ice with hats.
The CBC was happy, too, as it had Nugent-Hopkins on its post-game After Hours show.
"I definitely didn't expect to have that kind of a start. I just want to keep it going," Nugent-Hopkins said in an interview with NHL.com. "The message from the coaches was to go hard into the blue paint and I've been trying to do that."
The Eberle-Nugent-Hopkins-Hall line accounted for 14 of Edmonton's 30 shots.
The Canucks couldn't help but be impressed with the play of Nugent-Hopkins.
"We got one more goal than he did tonight," said Vancouver defenceman Kevin Bieksa. "So I guess the Canucks beat Nugent-Hopkins 4-3."
