It was reported today that next week, Edmonton Oilers’ General Manager Stan Bowman will meet with defenceman Darnell Nurse regarding Nurse’s future with the organization.
Nurse’s time as an Oiler coming to an end?
As reported by Mark Spector, it appears almost inevitable that Nurse will be traded at some point before the expiry of his current 8-year, $$9.25M AAV contract.
Currently, Nurse holds all the cards about his future, as he has a full no-movement clause. He, therefore, can decide that he still wants to be an Oiler, and that would be that.
However, that clause changes to a 10-team no-trade list after this year, which means that the Oilers would have the ability to trade him to any of those 10 teams without needing express approval to consummate the deal.
It’s no secret that many an Oilers fan has been clamouring for the team to trade Nurse, but the team had always seemed to have full support behind the defenceman.
However, as Spector reports, the Oilers have apparently been at least open to trading Nurse since last offseason, after the Oilers lost in the Stanley Cup Final for the second year in a row.
He also reported that the Oilers also contemplated scratching Nurse for the decisive Game seven of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final. That is definitely not something that you want to be discussing when it comes to your highest-paid defenceman.
How did it come to this?
Nurse was the Oilers’ 1st round pick, 7th overall, in 2013 NHL draft. That put him in the same timeline as Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, who were picked the next two years. Likely as a result of that, Nurse was placed in the same conversation regarding the team’s future.
It is pretty easy to see why that was the case. After all, he is a 6’4″ defenceman who skates like the wind but also has a mean streak. He showed some defensive acumen in junior hockey, having been named one of Canada’s top three players at the 2015 World Juniors, as well as the player of the game for the gold medal game.
Nurse’s NHL career started well enough, becoming a full-time NHLer at the age of 20, when he played 69 games in 2015–16. The next year, he played in all 13 of the team’s playoff games.
He has also shown some offensive prowess, having scored 40 points twice in his career, and over 30 points another five times. One of those times was the shortened 2021 season, where he amassed 16 goals and 36 points in just 56 games, a 23-goal, 53-point pace.
Unfortunately, that great season looks to have been the undoing of Nurse. He subsequently signed his much-maligned mega-deal on the back of that performance.
Prior to that, one could argue Nurse was a fan favourite, or at least not a huge whipping boy. Oilers fans love their tough players, so he was always given some grace for that.
However, after signing that contract, his play was scrutinized much more, and it appears all of the offensive, defensive and tough play started to dip. It was essentially a snowball effect, as the more his game dipped, the more he was criticized, which almost seemed to lead to even worse play, and therefore even more criticism.
As a result, there has been lots of discussion on what is the best thing to do with Nurse, whether it be holding onto him or trading him (buying him out isn’t exactly a great option given the minimal amount of savings).
Feasibility of trade?
Even if Nurse were to agree to be traded, there is still the other aspect of finding a trading partner.
Despite what some may think, Nurse does have value as an NHL player, and therefore, there would be some market for him. However, the contract once again rears its head, as he is not playing to the value of a $$9.25M defenceman, even in a rising salary cap environment.
Since Nurse has some value, this doesn’t have to be a full-on cap dump deal, where the Oilers pay another team an asset to get rid of the contract. Of course, that option is still available if the Oilers decide they would rather just have the full $$9.25M available to play with.
But the Oilers could still look at making more of a hockey trade to get back a piece or two that would help the team right now. After all, the Oilers are in a “cup or bust” year, so they can’t just trade away Nurse without having another option coming in to replace his minutes.
That likely means that the Oilers would have to take another team’s albatross contract in return (essentially a Nurse for Nurse trade), where a change of scenery could be good for all parties involved.
The one thing that will help the Oilers is the rising salary cap. Without a cap crunch across the league, like there has been the past few years with a flat cap, cap space isn’t quite the valuable commodity it once was. Therefore, the cost of getting rid of a bad contract shouldn’t be nearly as high. Add in that Nurse, again, is a bona fide NHL player, and that should lower the cost even more.
Whether or not Nurse is traded remains to be seen, of course. However, with this much smoke, one has to think it is only a matter of time before the fire comes.
He can’t be traded to those 10 teams next year