Darnell Nurse Is Overrated
It’s not a secret why the Edmonton Oilers continue to come up short despite having Connor McDavid and Leon Draistaitl on the same team. The blue line stinks and it’s not close to good enough. The Oilers aren’t deep enough on the blue line and Darnell Nurse may as well be the Trae Young of NBA superstars.
We know he’s not a number one. Can we stop treating him as such? Darnell Nurse is overrated and doesn’t deserve to be paid like a number one defenseman. If anything Nurse is the reason the Oilers are being held back and I really hate to say it because I like the player.
Nurse, 28, doesn’t provide enough offense to warrant a $9.25 million AAV on a contract that doesn’t expire until after the 2029-30 NHL Season when the Oilers defenseman will hit his age 35 season. Keep in mind, the Oilers do everything in their power to have Nurse not play the powerplay in order to focus on the defensive side of the game.
Nurse played all 82 games for the Oilers notching 43 points across more than 23 minutes of ice time per game. It should be mentioned that the point total is a bit misleading. Edmonton led the league in goals with four per game. After the trade, Mattias Ekholm played second pair minutes on the left side behind Nurse. Ekholm notched 14 points with Edmonton in 28 games compared to 18 points in 57 games with Nashville. Same player, different environment. Point being, it’s hard not to rack up points in Edmonton. 12 of the assists on the season were secondary to no one’s surprise.
On the season, Nurse had a 51.56 CF% which is really nothing special according to Natural Stat Trick. It’s a marginally better mark than what Cody Ceci had who no one views as a dynamite defenseman.
The problem is Nurse doesn’t warrant this payday in his prime. The last two years likely won’t be pretty. On an Oilers team that’s all in and counting every penny, deals like this are holding them back. If Nurse is already being asked to bail on powerplay and heavy-lifting offensive duties from the blue paint, what happens if he still can’t produce defensively? A big reason why the Oilers were eliminated by Vegas in the second round of the 2023 Western Conference Finals is because Nurse had a nightmare of a series.
Keep in mind Pietrangelo and Martinez were also doing heavy lifting against the Kane-McDavid-Draisaitl line. The VGK are a balanced four line team. Nurse simply couldn’t make exits out of the zone against the Vegas forecheck. If my number one defenseman isn’t providing offense and can’t make exits out of the zone while making a $9.25 million AAV…
Do I even need to finish the thought? It’s hashtag bad.
I hate that this is an anti-Darnell Nurse blog because I do like the player. He’s just being miscast as a number one when he should be a number three. It’s why I thought the Erik Karlsson trade was so important. Instead, they did it again with Evan Bouchard and now find themselves in a precarious spot. Are they going to be forced to give Bouchard a contract they don’t want to hand out?
I’m not sure how you fix this problem. Edmonton has to get better on the blue line but are already using too many resources on a player that’s not really helping enough. It’s going to be fascinating offseason in Edmonton. If the cap doesn’t spike, the Oilers should absolutely entertain trade discussions for Nurse.
Can we all agree that Darnell Nurse is overrated? If not, please tell me which big money defensemen he’s better than?
Cale Makar?
Adam Fox?
Charlie McAvoy?
Stop it… We know the answer by now. It’s not a secret anymore.
