When it comes to Darnell Nurse, two things you can bank on are size and big-game experience.
A six-foot-four, 215-pound defenceman, Nurse has played 79 post-season contests since the start of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs. That’s more second-season outings than every blue-liner in the league save Nurse’s teammate (for now) Evan Bouchard (81) and Brett Kulak (88), who went to the Western Conference Final with Colorado this year after spending the previous four springs alongside Nurse and Bouchard in Northern Alberta.
Nurse — who seems to agree with the Oilers that a change is in the best interest of all involved — is a prime example of a player whose appeal might increase in a different role or with a smaller cap hit.
He’s coming off a very disappointing season that saw him post just 24 points (his lowest total since 2017-18) and finish the year as a minus player for the first time since 2019-20.
When you’re carrying a cap hit of $9.25 million, that’s not going to cut it.
If Edmonton wants to move Nurse, though, it might be asked to retain at least a small portion of his cap hit. If you recast Nurse as, say, a $7-million defenceman with four years left on his deal, the level of interest around the league will spike.
Again, size and experience count for a lot, especially when a player is still just 31 years old.
With that in mind, we put together a list of potential landing spots for one of the bigger-name defencemen on the trade market.
You always look for pre-existing connections in these cases, and Nurse played for Pens GM Kyle Dubas when the latter was general manager of the OHL’s Soo Greyhounds in the first half of the 2010s.
The Penguins are in a fascinating spot. Pegged for the basement by many this past season, Pittsburgh wound up finishing second in the Metropolitan Division. While the Pens would surely like to build on that momentum, the franchise is still approaching a what-now situation with veterans Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang and Evgeni Malkin either coming to the end of contracts, careers or both (notice we didn’t include Sidney Crosby in there because it’s starting to feel like he’s going to play five more years).
There’s plenty of flux on the Pittsburgh blueline right now, with nobody aside from Letang and Ryan Graves signed beyond next season. Perhaps Nurse could be a stabilizing force for the next few campaigns as Pittsburgh turns the team over to the next generation.
The latter has one year left on his deal, and his name popped up in trade speculation for much of next year. A swap like that would give Edmonton another big body back, and the Oilers could determine if they like what they see with one season left on the 25-year-old Lohrei’s contract before he becomes a UFA.
For the B’s, Nurse fits their tough-to-play-against identity and would give them another huge body to slot on their blueline with Nikita Zadorov. Boston has a decent amount of cap space and doesn’t really have any pressing contracts to get done this summer, so fitting Nurse in — especially if you’re deleting one or two smaller contracts in the swap — wouldn’t be much of an issue.
We wondered about Winnipeg when determining landing spots for another defenceman who’s been a staple with a Canadian club, Morgan Rielly.
The logic is basically this: if the Jets can’t find a dream solution for their 2C hole, maybe you double down on defence and acquire Nurse as an over-qualified third-pair guy. He could slot in beside promising youngster Elias Salomonsson, a right-shot defenceman who’ll likely miss a bit of time at the start of the year due to shoulder surgery.
The Jets — who, not that long ago, had bruisers on the back end like Jacob Trouba, Ben Chiarot, Dustin Byfuglien and Tyler Myers — have a mobile, but undersized defence corps headlined by Josh Morrissey, Neal Pionk and Dylan DeMelo.
Nurse would bring some much-needed heft to the group.
The Sharks just went out and acquired a big, right-shot defenceman in Michael Kesselring from the Buffalo Sabres on Wednesday. Could they double down on size and find a spot for Nurse?
San Jose has just two defencemen under contract for next season — Dmitry Orlov and Sam Dickinson — who played at least 70 contests for the squad this past year. Even with some big extensions on the horizon for the likes of Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith, San Jose could squeeze in Nurse on a reduced cap hit.
With Orlov and Kesselring slotting in on the right side, Nurse could line up on the left and maybe work his way down the pairs over the years as 20-year-old Dickinson — among others — works his way up.