Darnell Nurse
Aside from the year they barely made the playoffs and then Chris Pronger carried them to the Stanley Cup Final, the Edmonton Oilers have been a mess of a franchise since 1991. So, the team overpaying a player isn’t really a headliner anymore.
The Oilers boast two of the best forwards in hockey with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, but no matter how many scoring titles those two take home, it hasn’t been enough to win much in the postseason. Or, really ever even get to the postseason.
McDavid is in his 7th season and the Oilers have won one playoff series in that time. They are becoming desperate to build a team around their superstars that is capable of going deep into a postseason. But, they are stuck with bad goaltending and subpar defence so it hasn’t been working out.
They did get a tremendous performance from Darnell Nurse last season. The blue liner scored 16 goals and 36 points in 56 games for the Oilers who made the playoffs, but didn’t win a single game. Nurse is now up to 21 career postseason games where he has scored zero goals and has five points.
His breakout offensive season was greatly rewarded when agent Kent Hughes negotiated an eight-year extension with an annual cap hit of $9.5 million. Nurse’s extension doesn’t kick in until next season, but the only defenders making more than $9.5 million this season are Drew Doughty and Erik Karlsson.
While Nurse was greatly rewarded for that breakout season, it did come with some red flags. First of all, every one of his games was played in the goofy All-Canadian Division where the Ottawa Senators and Vancouver Canucks looked horrible all season long, the Montreal Canadiens and Calgary Flames took turns sputtering like crazy and there was just a wild offensive free-for-all going on all winter.
It led to Nurse scoring the second most goals of any defenceman in the league, but was it a bit of a mirage because of the schedule? Many were skeptical, but Oilers GM Ken Holland was not. This season, Nurse has three goals in 28 games, with his shooting percentage dropping from 10.4% down to 2.9% which is exactly where it was in 2019-20.
Most defensive metrics would suggest Nurse is somewhere between mediocre and below average defensively. He is big, he scored a lot of goals last season, he puts up decent points, but he isn’t a shutdown defender.
However, he is being paid like a surefire Norris Trophy candidate for the next eight seasons. Nurse would have been a restricted free agent following this season and I really don’t know why Holland was in such a rush to sign him after a career year. What would Nurse be worth today on a contract extension?
A lot, but not $76 million over the next eight seasons. Somehow, Kent Hughes was able to convince Ken Holland that Nurse was worth every penny of that contract. It is one Oilers fans are going to hate in the near future, but Nurse will be thanking Hughes for it for the rest of his life.