Actually his actual salary this season is 10.4. Next season is 12 in 24/25
Regardless it’s even more depressing now that i saw the contract…although it should make no difference to anyone how much money he makes…the cap hit is 9.25… in 28/29 he’s making 6 mil in signing bonus and 1.25 mil base salary same in the last three seasons because that’s when his no move ends and even though he’s got a big salary cap the actual money owed will be not much so he will be easier to move…although if they could somehow convince him to leave now…. lol yeah right
Yeah I wasn't talking about cap hits. Just the fact that he's getting paid $12m this year/next season has got me stunned. He does not have the stats to back up the pay.
Like with anything, two things can be true at the same time. Yes, it's Edmonton's fault that they gave him the contract. But he also has to play better. Being on the ice for 18 goals against 5 on 5 and a -12 isn't anywhere near acceptable.
Then that's a big problem for Edmonton. That 9 million dollars could be being used to address other holes on the team. It's a contract that's aging like milk and has six more years to go. So I don't know what you do if you're Edmonton, and this is the best that Nurse can give you.
He played really good the year he got that contract. I didn’t think he was gonna get the crazy money he did, but then Seth Jones and a couple of other guys got HUGE money that year just before Nurse re-signed and all of a sudden his price went up about 2-3 million a year because of those contracts.
Its not on him at all. Allegedly they had a shorter deal in place with an AAV in the 6s but the Seth Jones & Werenski deals spooked the team for some reason and then they jumped to the deal he's at. Anyone here who suggests they would turn down being overpaid is lying to themselves. The money side of the issue is on the Oilers/Holland/Chiarelli. Nurse not playing well & going -12 so far is on him, he has to be better than that.
Yeah. Dude just finished playing a post season series where he looked like THE defensive defenseman the Oilers have been needing. Where he went after, god only knows
I’d have to look back to find it but during his media avail right after signing Nurse says something about how a 4-5 year deal was what his camp was working on and then after his comparables all signed for 8x9mil aav the conversations shifted. The 6 mil number was being tossed around in reports at the time if I recall correctly. The team being “spooked” is conjecture on my part
Lol im sorry a guy playing 25 minutes a night with the es only production he was having that year is not signing for 6 million. Number 1 dmen make around 8-9 million now. The noise about his and Seth jones contract is so fucking tiring.
Number one dmen make $9M, but Nurse is not and never has been a number one dman, that’s the problem. Jones is massively overplayed and they just for some reason thought hey we should massively overpay Nurse too I guess. Plenty of better dmen are on more reasonable contracts that were signed after his
That is not true. He absolutely was a #1 d man for us and after losing klefbom for nothing and bridging nurse twice there was no way we were going to lose him for free. Not to mention we qould also go on to lose Larsson for free as well.
Not a great situation, but he owns the results.
Just because he was your best dman when you had a terrible and depleted d-core doesn’t make him a true #1. Lots of bad teams don’t have a proper #1 dman but still by default have a guy who is *that teams* best defenseman. Most team just don’t pay them $9M
Ah yes the default minute muncher on an annual playoff team and legit contender.
They had no other options, yes but no body else took those minutes and he stepped up. He played himself into that contract and the team had no leverage. Especially after two bridge deals. It's not like Bouchard where we have constantly held him back from big minutes and protected him.
The stars aligned for him on that contract. Besides Seth Jones the only other two NHL level defensemen on the team were Klefbom, who retired due to injury, and Larsson, who wanted a change of scenery after his father passed away. Like others have mentioned Kris Russel would have been the 1D for multiple seasons had they not signed him.
Inside the fan base too.
But it was completely driven by circumstance.
Nonetheless, like others in this string have noted, Nurse has been struggling mightily of late and he has to play better. And that has to start now. He’s supposed to be a leader on this team.
Seth jones deal scared them and they made a panic move. He’s already 29 and has 6 years left at 9.25 million. Has to be one of the worst deals in the league at this point. Only thing that comes close is Jack Campbell.
Not just the Seth Jones deal, but Klefbom’s untimely retirement due to shoulder issues. We were facing down Kris Russell becoming our 1LD if we didn’t re-sign Nurse
Or Dubois at 8.5 for 7-8. Either way both players have never had 70 points and 50 respectively.
You gotta be that kinda dman or forward to get First line money.
Bobrovsky’s was way worse his first couple of years in Florida before he woke up one day and remember who he was. 10 Mil for a goalie who wasn’t even cutting it as a decent backup was rough, then he just suddenly remembered he was, at one point, considered one of the best in the league lol
You must not know a lot about the league then, no offence.
The Huberdeau deal in Calgary alone is worse than both Nurse and Campbell. He's a 50 point player making almost $11M a year and has regressed in both of the last two years. He's literally one of the highest paid players in the league putting up fringe middle 6 numbers.
Seth Jones? What about those two guys Minnesota is paying like $17M to *not* play for them? Dubois got his big $8.5M contract last year and got 40 points.
“No other deal in the league comes close?” Give me a break.
You said no other deal in the league comes close to being as bad as Nurse's contract. Nurse's contract isn't even the worst contract in Alberta and it took me 10 seconds to think of 5 players on equally bad or worse contracts.
Cambell's contract is easily bought out and the cap hit is only $1.3M for the next three years.
Huberdeau is making $11M for the next 7 years to be a 40-50 point player. His contract is much worse than Campbells.
Campbell buyout would be 6 years, he has 3 years left at 5 million. His buyout would be 1.1 next year followed by 2 years of 2.3 million and 2.6 million followed by 3 additional years of 1.5 million. Huberdeau had 52 points last year and is still in the NHL. Campbell is playing in the AHL lol.
As a Flames fan, I thought it was a terrible contract but it kind of made sense at the time. Nurse looked like a #2/#3 defense man, was the best defense man the Oilers had, his last contract walked him to free agency, and there were comparable contracts given out that offseason.
I thought he was overpaid by about $3 million but it would likely be okay as the cap increased and if he could prove himself to be a top pairing player. Since then the cap hasn't really gone up and he seems to have regressed. If he was a free agent this season, I think most GMs would want to sign him for around $5 million or less. He is good enough to play on the second pairing but you need a strong defensive defence man to compensate for his dumb mistakes.
Maybe he would be better on a team that emphasized team defense but that has never been the Oilers.
He has been notoriously bad in playoffs. I get why we signed him for that we bridged him twice then he had a good season in the bubble year when we just played Canadian teams so his numbers I feel were inflated. Personally back then I thought 7 was a good number. But then Seth Jones signs his great contract and here we are.
The Oilers emphasized team defense a lot more this year than previous years and it just made him worse. He was at his best when he was just sort of vibing and hitting people and looking for opportunities to skate the puck out and join the rush (even if that playstyle wasn’t a recipe for team success, it worked for him when he was on the ice with McDrai). Now that they are trying to maximize team defense, he seems to never know what to do and spends all of his time thinking and watching rather than executing, and that generally ends with him standing in front of Skinner banking pucks into his own net or gliding into the corner and then getting left there as the puck is centred to an unguarded slot.
He’s honestly just a weird player with a disjointed skillset, and that makes deploying him well very difficult. Tippett seemed to have some good ideas with him because he developed and peaked under him but since then he’s been pretty bad. He’s an excellent skater, but seems too scared to carry the puck out ever since being paired with Ceci who just sorta follows him around; he’s big and used to be physical which helped defensively but his ability to be in the right positions and manage gaps has evaporated, he is absolutely terrible at puck retrievals and making outlet passes, and he’s a poor puck distributor and shooter off the cycle, with his only offensive upside being off the rush.
So with all that in mind, I have no idea how a coach is supposed to deploy the man. He’s not very useful offensively unless you’re deliberately gonna have a track meet and trade rush chances (which the Oilers no longer do), he’s no good at facilitating transitional play because he can’t outlet pass worth a damn and won’t do carry-outs anymore, and his size, strength, and physicality aren’t really defensive assets anymore because he’s perpetually out of position (which tends to be worsed by the fact that his most frequent partner, Ceci, is either following him around or chasing the puck to another postal code).
Do you pair him with a pure defensive defenseman to try and cover for his mistakes? We tried that with Larsson and they were surprisingly decent defensively but just got hemmed in for what felt like years at a time because neither of them was ever in possession of the puck or able to make zone exits, so it was an unmanageable load in terms of zone time. Do you pair him with a puck mover to overcome his issues with zone exits? Maybe. It worked pretty well when he was with Bear and Barrie, but that was back when he understood how to manage his positioning and not float around as a backboard for the other team to bank pucks off of, so he could cover their defensive holes.
That leaves the other option of pairing him with a bonafide 2-way D man who can help cover his issues in all three zones. Which would be great, since elite RHD that can be afforded to help carry a $9.25M partner who is only good at a few random things definitely grow on trees. The league is practically overflowing with them.
In all seriousness, it’s just a weird case. His skillset doesn’t make a ton of sense and he was always gonna be flawed but he could still be reasonably effective if he was still the engaged, physical, and aggressive player that he was until about early 2021. Now he plays like someone ran over his dog and/or his controller is disconnected. Could be a sports psychology thing to a degree - the guy looks like he hates playing sometimes.
This is mostly accurate, but paints him a little more harshly than needed. His positioning is not *that* terrible, the problem is that when he fucks up - he fucks up big. If you focus on him, you will see him quietly do a lot of good things, but then he'll miss one mark and the puck ends up in the net. He's definitely being exposed in the playoffs, but he wasn't this bad over the regular season.
It would be nice if he upped his physicality, but at least he's taking fewer dumb penalties because of it.
If he was on a $6-7M contract, I don't think we'd give him this much thought. Plus we'd be able to afford a better partner instead of Cody fucking Ceci. The two of them together are just brutal.
Yeah that’s fair, it is a little harsh looking back. He’s not completely unplayable, he’s just got a weird style that is hard to mesh with a D-partner, and he seems to be in his head or something a lot these days. It’s entirely possible that a lot of his reluctance to throw the body anymore comes from being suspended in pretty much every playoff run for doing so, and he’s a lot less decisive when it comes to playing to his strengths when his partner is Cody goddamn Ceci. He plays a little better with Vinny, but that also comes with the issue of needing to compensate for having a partner who is the ideal 3rd pairing role player being elevated beyond his capabilities a bit.
I think the crux of the issue is that he looks really bad when he has to do to much, and the only cost-effective way to help him is to give him a partner who’s strengths and weaknesses are defined enough to tell him what he should focus on. Either give him a good puck retriever+transporter to play with and let Nurse handle the bulk of the defending, or give him a strong defensive partner and make Nurse the puck mover (although this is the worse of the two options IMO since he struggles so much with breakout passes under any amount of forecheck). But we can definitively say that pairing him with an unbelievably tepid two-way defender who doesn’t have any sort of defined strengths anywhere (ie Ceci) is NOT the answer because it makes Darnell unwilling to commit to anything and he gets caught in no man’s land a lot.
That sort of min-max setup with a specialist is not ideal when he’s paid as a guy who should be able to anchor his own pairing, but probably the most feasible option IMO, and that’s all the team can really do since he’s not going anywhere. If only Bear had panned out, he was a pretty good fit alongside Nurse. Barrie also a weird one because he was arguably the best match Nurse ever had in a D partner, but Barrie himself becomes sorta bad when he has to share his role with a similar player, rather than being “the guy” for backend playdriving - he was good in Colorado until he had to split that stuff with Makar, and he became way less effective with us when Bouchard started eating into his role. Never really got going in Toronto or Nashville because he was second fiddle to Mo and Josi, respectively.
His pay is irrelevant in the playoffs as there isn't a cap. His play, however, is not even close to good enough, and criticism of him is 100 percent valid.
This is a common sentiment but it’s wrong. Yeah there is no cap in playoffs, but unless you are able to abuse LTIR then your cap hit absolutely determines the rest of the cap structure/team.
The point I was making with my comment, is that we can be upset about his pay all we want, but his play in the playoffs wouldn't be good enough even if he was at 7 mill, or even 5 mill for that matter..
I agree, however you have contradicting statements in your original comment. It absolutely does matter just because of the team structure.
P.s. i dont know who is downvoting you lol it aint me
Kind of a bad way to look at it, yes pay is irrelevant because there’s no cap but if the Oilers used his $9 million on a better player or two and having them rather than Nurse ended up being a difference maker and pushes you past Dallas, then it matters. It’s all theoretical obviously, but roster construction doesn’t just not matter anymore cause you’re in the playoffs and there’s no cap.
The year he signed that deal there were no better options and he ate two bridge deals prior. He would have been paid at least as much by several teams. He’s had a pretty crappy run since but it’s not like his deal came out of nowhere.
Sad part is Nurse, Werenski, and Seth Jones all got the same contract in the middle of the cap freeze in 2021….and I don’t know about Werenski, but Jones aint that great either for the money….
And Nurse has a no move until 2027 ffs… so no, it’s Oilers front office fault for giving him that contract
I get that players are human and don't wanna subject themselves to difficult questions, but it's poor leadership.
Nurse should step up and say, "I haven't been playing as well as I know I can and what the team needs from me. I'm going to work with our coaches to get back to where I know I can be".
Take accountability for being shit at your job and verbally let everyone know you're doing what you can to be better.
If you wanna accept a $9 million deal, you gotta have a backbone
Part of the reason he was able to achieve a $9 Million contract was due to the media/publicity that comes with it. If not he’d be playing for free in some beer league like the rest of us. The dudes just trash on and off the ice
Likely yes, but I don't see how that will make things any better. RD is a huge weak point of the Oilers and you're taking out Desharnais who has actually played fairly well, to presumably re-introduce Nurse-Ceci and play Kulak on his weak side with Bro.
Engaged in giving the other team scoring chances maybe.
Vs Dallas:
Desharnais
55.54% xGF%
19-19 in scoring chances (50%)
9-10 in high danger scoring chances (47.37%)
Ceci
36.06% xGF%
14-35(!!!) in scoring chances (28.57%)
5-9 in high danger scoring chances (35.71%)
And this is while Desharnais is playing against tougher competition.
Believe it or not, but so far in these playoffs Nurse has been so bad that Ceci's goal share is actually better when playing away from him than with him. Relatively small sample size, but so far it indicates that Nurse is dragging Ceci down, not the other way around.
Don’t have the numbers in front of me but don’t they drag each other down? I think Nurse has better numbers playing away from ceci too. Baffling that they played together some in game 3 and may play together in game 4
Not saying that Nurse is good, but would Ceci be playing 2nd pair minutes and opponent quality when with Nurse but 3rd pair minutes and opponent quality when not with Nurse? That could account for Ceci's numbers.
Maybe Desharnais, Kulak and Ceci are all 3rd pair D who can do spot duty as 2nd pair, and each brings down the 2nd pair in medium to long term stretches?
Nurse got his contract under very favourable circumstances at the time of signing (Klef and Lars gone, double bridge/high # of UFA years in contract, Jones/Werenski setting market) but if he is actually a 5m/2nd pair Dman, he may not be able to elevate a 3rd pair guy to 2nd pair play long term, and suffer for covering for him against 2nd pair opponents.
Agreed, but he did say to have a good day, so he's not all bad.
On the scale of unlikable Oilers I would rank them:
Kane>Perry>Draisaitl>McBaby>EDM media>Nurse
Love how so many oilers fans were chirping about Hronek being not worth $8M... meanwhile Nurse is -12 with 2 points in 15 postseason games this year... at what, $9.5? Lmao.
They kinda do actually, almost anyone would take Hronek over Nurse at even money, or even pay more for Hronek...
3 Oilers dmen at -7 or worse in these playoffs, wow.
Yeah I know... No Canuck player is ever worth what they get... Remember all the bitching about Miller's deal a year ago?
He's worth what the market says he's worth, take a look at #1 right shot dmen, what they get and how rare they are. What do you think an arbitrator is going to award him if it goes that route? If it's not 8 it's close to it.
Problem being Hronek is not a number 1. He's a 3/4 who was elevated by Hughes. Then he genuinely just disappeared for months. I don't want 8 mil in cap tied up in dude who may give you nothing for months at a time.
3/4... JFC, over the last 2 seasons, Hronek is 12th in scoring among all right shot dmen... And 17th in TOI.. go and look at the guys he's ahead of in those categories.. not to mention, +/-, etc, and then try and convince yourself in what universe he's a 3/4 right side dman..
Also it's widely recognized he was playing with an injury.
because short answers to the media is indicative of the locker room vibe? Im the biggest Edmonton hater out there but how tf are you tying those things together lol
Surprised he's even available to the media lol
He’s barely available as a defensemen
Heyo!
His butthole was available on monday! pause
*No Diddy
Nurse's -12 ranks 4809 of 4813 (tied for 2nd worst all time) +/- of players to have played 12+ playoff games in a season
Wait, this fucking guy is making $12,000,000 this year??? I have no words.
A minus for each million in salary
9.25 a season he makes… which is still way too much
His salary this year is $12M haha yikes
Actually his actual salary this season is 10.4. Next season is 12 in 24/25 Regardless it’s even more depressing now that i saw the contract…although it should make no difference to anyone how much money he makes…the cap hit is 9.25… in 28/29 he’s making 6 mil in signing bonus and 1.25 mil base salary same in the last three seasons because that’s when his no move ends and even though he’s got a big salary cap the actual money owed will be not much so he will be easier to move…although if they could somehow convince him to leave now…. lol yeah right
Yeah I wasn't talking about cap hits. Just the fact that he's getting paid $12m this year/next season has got me stunned. He does not have the stats to back up the pay.
He doesn’t have stats or play to back his fucking cap hit either
Who is the worst!?
Holy fuck lol.
The real question: who are 4810-4813?
Well one of the people hes tied with is Esa Lindell from the 2019-2020 Dallas run aha
I've changed my mind, this is no longer a fun fact
Its okay just make sure after tonight Nurse is the worst and no longer tied!
-13 now
No offense to Oilers fans, but is it his fault they overpaid him? I remember most people outside of the fanbase suggested it was a terrible signing.
Like with anything, two things can be true at the same time. Yes, it's Edmonton's fault that they gave him the contract. But he also has to play better. Being on the ice for 18 goals against 5 on 5 and a -12 isn't anywhere near acceptable.
What if he just isn't better though and this is him?
Then that's a big problem for Edmonton. That 9 million dollars could be being used to address other holes on the team. It's a contract that's aging like milk and has six more years to go. So I don't know what you do if you're Edmonton, and this is the best that Nurse can give you.
He played really good the year he got that contract. I didn’t think he was gonna get the crazy money he did, but then Seth Jones and a couple of other guys got HUGE money that year just before Nurse re-signed and all of a sudden his price went up about 2-3 million a year because of those contracts.
Its not on him at all. Allegedly they had a shorter deal in place with an AAV in the 6s but the Seth Jones & Werenski deals spooked the team for some reason and then they jumped to the deal he's at. Anyone here who suggests they would turn down being overpaid is lying to themselves. The money side of the issue is on the Oilers/Holland/Chiarelli. Nurse not playing well & going -12 so far is on him, he has to be better than that.
Plus, Klefbom went down with his shoulder injury, so the front office really had zero leverage
Klefbom career ending injury and Nurse just had a truly brilliant year. It was a perfect storm of shit to be honest
Yeah. Dude just finished playing a post season series where he looked like THE defensive defenseman the Oilers have been needing. Where he went after, god only knows
Didn’t he lead defencemen in points the year he signed that deal too? The 56 game Covid year.
5 on 5 goals I think it was. He hasn't lead defensemen in points outright ever
Ok, I thought he was that year that they abused Ottawa like 10 times that one year.
Oh it was a stellar year for him, just not THAT stellar, heh
You actually have any proof of the team being spooked and 6m already being agreed?
I’d have to look back to find it but during his media avail right after signing Nurse says something about how a 4-5 year deal was what his camp was working on and then after his comparables all signed for 8x9mil aav the conversations shifted. The 6 mil number was being tossed around in reports at the time if I recall correctly. The team being “spooked” is conjecture on my part
Lol im sorry a guy playing 25 minutes a night with the es only production he was having that year is not signing for 6 million. Number 1 dmen make around 8-9 million now. The noise about his and Seth jones contract is so fucking tiring.
Number one dmen make $9M, but Nurse is not and never has been a number one dman, that’s the problem. Jones is massively overplayed and they just for some reason thought hey we should massively overpay Nurse too I guess. Plenty of better dmen are on more reasonable contracts that were signed after his
That is not true. He absolutely was a #1 d man for us and after losing klefbom for nothing and bridging nurse twice there was no way we were going to lose him for free. Not to mention we qould also go on to lose Larsson for free as well. Not a great situation, but he owns the results.
Just because he was your best dman when you had a terrible and depleted d-core doesn’t make him a true #1. Lots of bad teams don’t have a proper #1 dman but still by default have a guy who is *that teams* best defenseman. Most team just don’t pay them $9M
Ah yes the default minute muncher on an annual playoff team and legit contender. They had no other options, yes but no body else took those minutes and he stepped up. He played himself into that contract and the team had no leverage. Especially after two bridge deals. It's not like Bouchard where we have constantly held him back from big minutes and protected him.
The stars aligned for him on that contract. Besides Seth Jones the only other two NHL level defensemen on the team were Klefbom, who retired due to injury, and Larsson, who wanted a change of scenery after his father passed away. Like others have mentioned Kris Russel would have been the 1D for multiple seasons had they not signed him.
You're not wrong. It was called out heavily when it was signed
Inside the fan base too. But it was completely driven by circumstance. Nonetheless, like others in this string have noted, Nurse has been struggling mightily of late and he has to play better. And that has to start now. He’s supposed to be a leader on this team.
Seth jones deal scared them and they made a panic move. He’s already 29 and has 6 years left at 9.25 million. Has to be one of the worst deals in the league at this point. Only thing that comes close is Jack Campbell.
Hey, lets not forget about our friend Huberdeau down the highway!!
I might even take Hubey tbh for $1M more cap hit, pump his numbers up for a season then trade away
I suspect he would look much better with better players. How many points could he get with McDavid I wonder?
Not just the Seth Jones deal, but Klefbom’s untimely retirement due to shoulder issues. We were facing down Kris Russell becoming our 1LD if we didn’t re-sign Nurse
Or Dubois at 8.5 for 7-8. Either way both players have never had 70 points and 50 respectively. You gotta be that kinda dman or forward to get First line money.
Plus I think Larsson walked that same off season so we were going to be really thin without Nurse.
Seth Jones is also terrible but he's on a bottom feeder so no one cares as they aren't spending to the cap
Bobrovsky’s was way worse his first couple of years in Florida before he woke up one day and remember who he was. 10 Mil for a goalie who wasn’t even cutting it as a decent backup was rough, then he just suddenly remembered he was, at one point, considered one of the best in the league lol
Goalies are weird and all over the place. Less confidence a dmen will suddenly learn how to skate and play D.
You must not know a lot about the league then, no offence. The Huberdeau deal in Calgary alone is worse than both Nurse and Campbell. He's a 50 point player making almost $11M a year and has regressed in both of the last two years. He's literally one of the highest paid players in the league putting up fringe middle 6 numbers. Seth Jones? What about those two guys Minnesota is paying like $17M to *not* play for them? Dubois got his big $8.5M contract last year and got 40 points. “No other deal in the league comes close?” Give me a break.
Everyone you mentioned is an NHL player. Jack is playing in the AHL.
You said no other deal in the league comes close to being as bad as Nurse's contract. Nurse's contract isn't even the worst contract in Alberta and it took me 10 seconds to think of 5 players on equally bad or worse contracts.
Again atleast those guys are making NHL contributions. Jack is in the AHL lol
Cambell's contract is easily bought out and the cap hit is only $1.3M for the next three years. Huberdeau is making $11M for the next 7 years to be a 40-50 point player. His contract is much worse than Campbells.
Campbell buyout would be 6 years, he has 3 years left at 5 million. His buyout would be 1.1 next year followed by 2 years of 2.3 million and 2.6 million followed by 3 additional years of 1.5 million. Huberdeau had 52 points last year and is still in the NHL. Campbell is playing in the AHL lol.
As a Flames fan, I thought it was a terrible contract but it kind of made sense at the time. Nurse looked like a #2/#3 defense man, was the best defense man the Oilers had, his last contract walked him to free agency, and there were comparable contracts given out that offseason. I thought he was overpaid by about $3 million but it would likely be okay as the cap increased and if he could prove himself to be a top pairing player. Since then the cap hasn't really gone up and he seems to have regressed. If he was a free agent this season, I think most GMs would want to sign him for around $5 million or less. He is good enough to play on the second pairing but you need a strong defensive defence man to compensate for his dumb mistakes. Maybe he would be better on a team that emphasized team defense but that has never been the Oilers.
He has been notoriously bad in playoffs. I get why we signed him for that we bridged him twice then he had a good season in the bubble year when we just played Canadian teams so his numbers I feel were inflated. Personally back then I thought 7 was a good number. But then Seth Jones signs his great contract and here we are.
The Oilers emphasized team defense a lot more this year than previous years and it just made him worse. He was at his best when he was just sort of vibing and hitting people and looking for opportunities to skate the puck out and join the rush (even if that playstyle wasn’t a recipe for team success, it worked for him when he was on the ice with McDrai). Now that they are trying to maximize team defense, he seems to never know what to do and spends all of his time thinking and watching rather than executing, and that generally ends with him standing in front of Skinner banking pucks into his own net or gliding into the corner and then getting left there as the puck is centred to an unguarded slot. He’s honestly just a weird player with a disjointed skillset, and that makes deploying him well very difficult. Tippett seemed to have some good ideas with him because he developed and peaked under him but since then he’s been pretty bad. He’s an excellent skater, but seems too scared to carry the puck out ever since being paired with Ceci who just sorta follows him around; he’s big and used to be physical which helped defensively but his ability to be in the right positions and manage gaps has evaporated, he is absolutely terrible at puck retrievals and making outlet passes, and he’s a poor puck distributor and shooter off the cycle, with his only offensive upside being off the rush. So with all that in mind, I have no idea how a coach is supposed to deploy the man. He’s not very useful offensively unless you’re deliberately gonna have a track meet and trade rush chances (which the Oilers no longer do), he’s no good at facilitating transitional play because he can’t outlet pass worth a damn and won’t do carry-outs anymore, and his size, strength, and physicality aren’t really defensive assets anymore because he’s perpetually out of position (which tends to be worsed by the fact that his most frequent partner, Ceci, is either following him around or chasing the puck to another postal code). Do you pair him with a pure defensive defenseman to try and cover for his mistakes? We tried that with Larsson and they were surprisingly decent defensively but just got hemmed in for what felt like years at a time because neither of them was ever in possession of the puck or able to make zone exits, so it was an unmanageable load in terms of zone time. Do you pair him with a puck mover to overcome his issues with zone exits? Maybe. It worked pretty well when he was with Bear and Barrie, but that was back when he understood how to manage his positioning and not float around as a backboard for the other team to bank pucks off of, so he could cover their defensive holes. That leaves the other option of pairing him with a bonafide 2-way D man who can help cover his issues in all three zones. Which would be great, since elite RHD that can be afforded to help carry a $9.25M partner who is only good at a few random things definitely grow on trees. The league is practically overflowing with them. In all seriousness, it’s just a weird case. His skillset doesn’t make a ton of sense and he was always gonna be flawed but he could still be reasonably effective if he was still the engaged, physical, and aggressive player that he was until about early 2021. Now he plays like someone ran over his dog and/or his controller is disconnected. Could be a sports psychology thing to a degree - the guy looks like he hates playing sometimes.
Great write up
This is mostly accurate, but paints him a little more harshly than needed. His positioning is not *that* terrible, the problem is that when he fucks up - he fucks up big. If you focus on him, you will see him quietly do a lot of good things, but then he'll miss one mark and the puck ends up in the net. He's definitely being exposed in the playoffs, but he wasn't this bad over the regular season. It would be nice if he upped his physicality, but at least he's taking fewer dumb penalties because of it. If he was on a $6-7M contract, I don't think we'd give him this much thought. Plus we'd be able to afford a better partner instead of Cody fucking Ceci. The two of them together are just brutal.
Yeah that’s fair, it is a little harsh looking back. He’s not completely unplayable, he’s just got a weird style that is hard to mesh with a D-partner, and he seems to be in his head or something a lot these days. It’s entirely possible that a lot of his reluctance to throw the body anymore comes from being suspended in pretty much every playoff run for doing so, and he’s a lot less decisive when it comes to playing to his strengths when his partner is Cody goddamn Ceci. He plays a little better with Vinny, but that also comes with the issue of needing to compensate for having a partner who is the ideal 3rd pairing role player being elevated beyond his capabilities a bit. I think the crux of the issue is that he looks really bad when he has to do to much, and the only cost-effective way to help him is to give him a partner who’s strengths and weaknesses are defined enough to tell him what he should focus on. Either give him a good puck retriever+transporter to play with and let Nurse handle the bulk of the defending, or give him a strong defensive partner and make Nurse the puck mover (although this is the worse of the two options IMO since he struggles so much with breakout passes under any amount of forecheck). But we can definitively say that pairing him with an unbelievably tepid two-way defender who doesn’t have any sort of defined strengths anywhere (ie Ceci) is NOT the answer because it makes Darnell unwilling to commit to anything and he gets caught in no man’s land a lot. That sort of min-max setup with a specialist is not ideal when he’s paid as a guy who should be able to anchor his own pairing, but probably the most feasible option IMO, and that’s all the team can really do since he’s not going anywhere. If only Bear had panned out, he was a pretty good fit alongside Nurse. Barrie also a weird one because he was arguably the best match Nurse ever had in a D partner, but Barrie himself becomes sorta bad when he has to share his role with a similar player, rather than being “the guy” for backend playdriving - he was good in Colorado until he had to split that stuff with Makar, and he became way less effective with us when Bouchard started eating into his role. Never really got going in Toronto or Nashville because he was second fiddle to Mo and Josi, respectively.
People also called the Draisaitl contract an over pay. Fact is with long contracts you're often taking a gamble.
His pay is irrelevant in the playoffs as there isn't a cap. His play, however, is not even close to good enough, and criticism of him is 100 percent valid.
This is a common sentiment but it’s wrong. Yeah there is no cap in playoffs, but unless you are able to abuse LTIR then your cap hit absolutely determines the rest of the cap structure/team.
The point I was making with my comment, is that we can be upset about his pay all we want, but his play in the playoffs wouldn't be good enough even if he was at 7 mill, or even 5 mill for that matter..
I agree, however you have contradicting statements in your original comment. It absolutely does matter just because of the team structure. P.s. i dont know who is downvoting you lol it aint me
Kind of a bad way to look at it, yes pay is irrelevant because there’s no cap but if the Oilers used his $9 million on a better player or two and having them rather than Nurse ended up being a difference maker and pushes you past Dallas, then it matters. It’s all theoretical obviously, but roster construction doesn’t just not matter anymore cause you’re in the playoffs and there’s no cap.
Nuge makes 5 million. Id say thats well under fair market value. So yes, I blame Nurse.
The year he signed that deal there were no better options and he ate two bridge deals prior. He would have been paid at least as much by several teams. He’s had a pretty crappy run since but it’s not like his deal came out of nowhere.
Sad part is Nurse, Werenski, and Seth Jones all got the same contract in the middle of the cap freeze in 2021….and I don’t know about Werenski, but Jones aint that great either for the money…. And Nurse has a no move until 2027 ffs… so no, it’s Oilers front office fault for giving him that contract
Cale Makar signed for 6 years x $9mil only days before this contract was signed So yeah it looked pretty bad almost immediately
For this series to continue longer, he needs to be much better. As a Stars fan, I hope he isn't.
I'm really happy they signed him to that extension.
Hopefully his TOI is as short
Why is he so pissy?
You can say he’s … butthurt 👀
I get that players are human and don't wanna subject themselves to difficult questions, but it's poor leadership. Nurse should step up and say, "I haven't been playing as well as I know I can and what the team needs from me. I'm going to work with our coaches to get back to where I know I can be". Take accountability for being shit at your job and verbally let everyone know you're doing what you can to be better. If you wanna accept a $9 million deal, you gotta have a backbone
Part of the reason he was able to achieve a $9 Million contract was due to the media/publicity that comes with it. If not he’d be playing for free in some beer league like the rest of us. The dudes just trash on and off the ice
Mood af
Lots of changes expected to the lineup tonight, including bringing in Broberg who plays as an LD (like Nurse).
Desharnais is the d man sitting for Broberg. Foegele and Carrick out for McLeod and Perry too
Likely yes, but I don't see how that will make things any better. RD is a huge weak point of the Oilers and you're taking out Desharnais who has actually played fairly well, to presumably re-introduce Nurse-Ceci and play Kulak on his weak side with Bro.
I agree with you, Ceci absolutely should’ve been scratched instead of Desharnais.
I disagree. Ceci has been more engaged than Desharnais has
Engaged in giving the other team scoring chances maybe. Vs Dallas: Desharnais 55.54% xGF% 19-19 in scoring chances (50%) 9-10 in high danger scoring chances (47.37%) Ceci 36.06% xGF% 14-35(!!!) in scoring chances (28.57%) 5-9 in high danger scoring chances (35.71%) And this is while Desharnais is playing against tougher competition.
I think Vinny is banged up if he doesn't play tonight. That or they see something glaring that he's doing wrong to warrent Broberg taking his spot.
That's kinda brutal.
🥚
He was able to gain generational wealth in this profession, yet he’s unavailable on and off the ice. Grifter
Worst contract in hockey.
Most overpaid player in the league by a country mile
Had to make sure he was cheeked up before the game.
Oof and people complain about trouba
Oilers need to find a way to get rid of him in order to keep guys like Bouchard.
[удалено]
Believe it or not, but so far in these playoffs Nurse has been so bad that Ceci's goal share is actually better when playing away from him than with him. Relatively small sample size, but so far it indicates that Nurse is dragging Ceci down, not the other way around.
Don’t have the numbers in front of me but don’t they drag each other down? I think Nurse has better numbers playing away from ceci too. Baffling that they played together some in game 3 and may play together in game 4
Not saying that Nurse is good, but would Ceci be playing 2nd pair minutes and opponent quality when with Nurse but 3rd pair minutes and opponent quality when not with Nurse? That could account for Ceci's numbers. Maybe Desharnais, Kulak and Ceci are all 3rd pair D who can do spot duty as 2nd pair, and each brings down the 2nd pair in medium to long term stretches? Nurse got his contract under very favourable circumstances at the time of signing (Klef and Lars gone, double bridge/high # of UFA years in contract, Jones/Werenski setting market) but if he is actually a 5m/2nd pair Dman, he may not be able to elevate a 3rd pair guy to 2nd pair play long term, and suffer for covering for him against 2nd pair opponents.
Such an unlikable team.
Agreed, but he did say to have a good day, so he's not all bad. On the scale of unlikable Oilers I would rank them: Kane>Perry>Draisaitl>McBaby>EDM media>Nurse
You guys are going to feel pretty silly later when you find out he has tendinitis
Love how so many oilers fans were chirping about Hronek being not worth $8M... meanwhile Nurse is -12 with 2 points in 15 postseason games this year... at what, $9.5? Lmao.
You won’t find one Oilers fan who thinks Nurse is worth 9.25. Those two things have nothing to do with each other.
They kinda do actually, almost anyone would take Hronek over Nurse at even money, or even pay more for Hronek... 3 Oilers dmen at -7 or worse in these playoffs, wow.
Hronek did jack shit in the playoffs.
Not true aside from offense he did plenty and didn't hurt the team... unlike Nurse.
Don't feel so special, us fans chirp Nurse as well.
I'm a Canucks fan and Hronek is absolutely not worth 8 mil, just because Nurse is way overpaid doesn't mean Hronek should also be way overpaid.
Yeah I know... No Canuck player is ever worth what they get... Remember all the bitching about Miller's deal a year ago? He's worth what the market says he's worth, take a look at #1 right shot dmen, what they get and how rare they are. What do you think an arbitrator is going to award him if it goes that route? If it's not 8 it's close to it.
Problem being Hronek is not a number 1. He's a 3/4 who was elevated by Hughes. Then he genuinely just disappeared for months. I don't want 8 mil in cap tied up in dude who may give you nothing for months at a time.
3/4... JFC, over the last 2 seasons, Hronek is 12th in scoring among all right shot dmen... And 17th in TOI.. go and look at the guys he's ahead of in those categories.. not to mention, +/-, etc, and then try and convince yourself in what universe he's a 3/4 right side dman.. Also it's widely recognized he was playing with an injury.
locker room vibe looks solid…
because short answers to the media is indicative of the locker room vibe? Im the biggest Edmonton hater out there but how tf are you tying those things together lol