EDMONTON — The Doctor is out.
Darnell “Doc” Nurse never found the antidote to making people forget about the eight-year, $74 million deal that then-GM Ken Holland signed him to back in 2021.
So on Wednesday, after 798 regular-season games and another 100 in the post-season, the Nurse era ended in Edmonton somewhat surprisingly, when the very contract that made Nurse a target of Oilers fans and media was moved with no retention to the San Jose Sharks.
“There are a lot of conversations that go into these trades,” said general manager Stan Bowman, seemingly talked out after the three-week process of moving Nurse had concluded. “When they’re finished, it looks like, ‘Oh, that’s a pretty simple trade. Why didn’t you do that sooner?’
“But there’s a lot of factors that go into those deals to finally get it to the point where it is. Without salary retention was very important for us.”
Bowman retrieved Russian defenceman Shakir Mukhamadullin and college defenceman Zach Sharp from San Jose in the deal, freeing up as much as $8 million in cap space, depending on the cost to renew Mukhamadullin’s contract.
From there, he signed free-agent defenceman Ryan Shea to a five-year deal with an annual average value of $4 million, acquired depth goalie Devon Levi in a trade with Buffalo, added veteran depth winger Mathieu Joseph (one year, $1 million), and re-signed useful winger Kasperi Kapanen to a one-year deal with a cap hit of $2.6 million.
At day’s end, the Oilers had 21 players signed with just over $8.25 million in cap space remaining. Tidy work, we’d say.
Our prediction: Bowman still requires a goalie, one with a higher pedigree than Levi, and hopefully, a name that can compete with the returning Tristan Jarry. Connor Ingram, who relieved Jarry of said starting job last season, remained unsigned at the time of this writing.
“Tristan is going to be back,” Bowman said when asked about his goaltending. “We’re still looking at some other things for our roster.”
Nurse, drafted seventh overall in 2013 by Edmonton, facilitated the trade by expanding his three-team trade list to include the Sharks, seemingly the one interested party that would not demand salary retention from Bowman.
The timing of that 2021 contract left Nurse fortunate: Edmonton had just lost defencemen Oscar Klefbom (shoulder) and Adam Larsson (free agent), while Seth Jones and Zach Werenski had signed huge free agent deals that summer. Holland could not afford to lose another Top 4 D-man, and he paid up accordingly.
In the end, though, it was a contract that Nurse could never live up to, which was his demise in Edmonton. The Oilers believe they can spend 60% of Nurse’s $9.25 million cap hit and get the same production from someone else.
Cue Shea and Mukhamadullin — both lefties, like Nurse — who will eat up the 21 minutes of ice time Nurse leaves behind. But as an assistant captain and core member of the Oilers’ leadership group, there remains a hole that will need to be filled over time, as the Oilers divest themselves of a popular leader inside their dressing room.
Even if the fan base, who long ago made Nurse their fall guy, will be happy to see the Oilers move on from Nurse.
“No one expects more of themselves than me,” Nurse told the San Jose media in a Zoom call Wednesday. “Joe from down the street can be mad because he can’t drink his beer and watch the second round of playoffs, but I live with each and every game — each and every moment — throughout the summer, and try to learn from it, grow from it.
“When you have a high cap hit, there are (criticisms) that were definitely warranted — my play warranted them. I would say there was probably a lot of things as well that probably weren’t warranted. And for whatever reason, I was the problem. That’s sports; that’s how it works.”
After arriving in Edmonton as a lanky teenager, Nurse, 31, leaves with his wife and three kids. He played in two Stanley Cup Finals with the Oilers, and alas, we all know how they ended.
There is some irony in the fact that Bowman’s biggest splash on this July 1 was in getting a big salary off Edmonton’s books, when the past two July 1s have been an exercise in regrettable signings by the Oilers’ front office.
On this free agent day, Bowman’s acquisitions had names like Mukhamadullin and Shea, Levi and Joseph. Their cap hits, by and large, were equally as inauspicious.
With $8.25 million remaining to be spent, Bowman can both afford a goalie upgrade and take two or three million dollars into the March Trade Deadline, where money goes further and players emerge who were not available this week.
It’s a decent spot of GM’ing, we’d say. If he can finish the job, perhaps the Oilers can too, one day.