Drafted seventh overall in 2013 NHL Entry Draft, Darnell Nurse was brought into the Edmonton Oilers team that was deep inside the rebuild. After spending majority of the first two seasons following the draft in the OHL and AHL, Nurse was brought full-time into the Oilers defensive mix in the 2015–16 campaign. His offensive production stated to slowly flourish, producing 41 points in 82 games by the 2018–19 season. After having his best point-per-game season in 2020–21, when he tallied 36 points in 56 games, Nurse signed an eight-year, $74M contract. This is a cap hit of $9,250,000 that kicked into effect in October 2022 and will continue until 2030.
Since signing the contract, Nurse has experienced a largely stagnant offensive performance. However, what has been perhaps the biggest question mark of Nurse’s game has been his ability to be a reliable and consistent defensive presence. So what do we make of Nurse’s defensive play so far this season? Let’s discuss below.
Nurse has too many giveaways
Nurse is by no means a bad defenceman. As our previous player profile , he has a number of strengths such as his size, speed, and shot blocking.
However, while he may enjoy jumping on an offensive rush and creating a hit, this at times creates a giveaway and leaves himself and his defensive partner trying to chase down an odd-man rush. As it stands, Nurse currently has 14 giveaways this season according to the Natural Stat-Trick. Defensive giveaways can lead to opponent’s offensive opportunities and unfortunately for Nurse, one X (formerly Twitter) user pointed out a week ago that Nurse has been on the ice for close to half of the Oilers goals against.
Revisiting this statistic a week later, Nurse has been on ice for 24 of the 48 goals scored against the Oilers this season. His expected goals percentage (xG%) is 44.13% which means that more goals are expected to be scored against than for when Nurse is playing. This is the second lowest percentage of this metric in his career. While he may have had a smidge of poor puck luck (PDO 0.943), his statistics show that the majority of faceoffs taken with him on the ice is in the defensive zone (116) as compared to offensive zone (94).
To give Nurse some credit, he has been a part of an incredibly poor penalty kill 15 games into the season. Majority of the goals scored against him on the ice have come on the penalty kill. As it currently stands, Oilers’ penalty kill percentage is 58.97%, giving up 16 power play goals. Of those, 13 came with Nurse on the ice. If the Oilers can fix their awful penalty kill, the amount of goals scored against him can drastically significantly.
Still looking for a defensive partner
Nurse so far has spent majority of his time this season as the second pairings’ left-sided defenceman. His underlying numbers with the most common right-sided partners of Troy Stecher and Travis Dermott have produced either a very poor or neutral expected goals for percentage (50.11% with Stecher and 29.44% with Dermott). Both Stecher and Dermott may have upsides to their individual games but neither of them are the NHL standard for a second line right-sided defenceman.
Interesting enought, Nurse’s best defensive pairing so far has been in a position that Oilers’ brass should be looking to address: right-sided second defenceman. When paired with Brett Kulak, with whom he spent third most time this season, his expected goals for percentage had a significant improvement at 58.28%. Of the 157 defensive pairs who have played 50 or more minutes together this season, this pairing ranks as 20th best in this metric.
What should the Oilers do now?
First and foremost, Oilers need to continue working on their penalty kill which is where Nurse has given up majority of the goals. I think the Oilers ought to continue to keep Nurse on the second defensive pairing. But as the underlying metrics suggest, it should come on the right side with Kulak as his linemate.
Kris Knoblauch has continued to mix up the lines early into the season as the team is trying to find their stride. Giving Nurse a chance to develop chemistry with a consistent partner is important. This is especially key since his style of play often involves creating a physical play or going up on an offensive rush. A solid defensive linemate like Kulak is more likely to get accustomed to Nurse’s playing style if given time and this can help turn this pairing into an offensively productive and defensively responsible partnership.
The Oilers management is likely considering an upgrade at the second pairing RD position. Giving Kulak-Nurse pair a chance to establish themselves may potentially address this without a cost of a draft pick or further financially straining a team that has limited cap space and extensions to negotiate.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
