Darnell Nurse has another good, not great season: 2024-25 Edmonton Oilers player review

The biggest issue with Darnell Nurse continues to be how much money he makes, and an inability to play up to the level of a $9.25-million defenceman.

But if you’re able to set aside the dollar amount — which in the big picture you of course can’t do — Nurse is still a solid contributor for the Oilers. This year was no different, as he continued to munch minutes in the regular season with solid results. He was a net positive in terms of shot attempt share, scoring chance share, expected goal share and actual goal share. Individually he blocked and took a ton of shots, laid the body lots, and chipped in a good amount of offence.

His underlying numbers all took a dip in the playoffs, including his goal share, below the 50 percent mark. Those are undoubtedly concerning things as his he and his most common partner, Brett Kulak, really struggled in 155 five-on-five minutes, with a 43.3 percent shot attempt share and the scoring chance share, 43.7 percent expected goal share while getting outscored 7-3. The coaching staff’s unwillingness to move away from this pairing was an issue for the team, doubly so considering they played the second-most of any Oilers pairing this spring.

Nonetheless, Nurse drove offence at a two percent rate above league average, defence at a league average rate and penalty kill play at a three percent rate below league average, according to HockeyViz, which pegged his overall contributions at that of a second pairing defenceman.

Moving forward it will be interesting how the new coaching staff maneuver’s Nurse’s pairing and minutes, and the fact the Oilers reportedly approached Nurse about his no-trade clause this summer will be a story to follow in the future.

DARNELL NURSE’S CAREER SO FAR

2 0 0 0 -2 0 0.00 0 0 0 2 0.0 17:00 2015-2016

69 3 7 10 -13 60 0.14 0 0 0 120 2.5 20:14 2016-2017

44 5 6 11 0 33 0.25 0 0 0 85 5.9 17:01 2017-2018

82 6 20 26 15 67 0.32 0 0 2 194 3.1 22:15 2018-2019

82 10 31 41 -5 87 0.50 1 0 1 196 5.1 23:49 2019-2020

71 5 28 33 -3 48 0.46 0 0 1 170 2.9 23:28 2020-2021

56 16 20 36 27 57 0.64 1 0 2 154 10.4 25:38 2021-2022

71 9 26 35 18 54 0.49 0 2 0 203 4.4 25:03 2022-2023

82 12 31 43 26 64 0.52 0 2 4 203 5.9 23:30 2023-2024

81 10 22 32 3 79 0.40 1 1 2 181 5.5 21:54 2024-2025

76 5 28 33 11 72 0.43 0 1 1 188 2.7 22:22 Totals: 716 81 219 300 77 621 0.42 3 6 13 1696 4.8 22:01

OTHER PLAYER REVIEWS

• Evander Kane
• Connor Brown
• Corey Perry
• Jeff Skinner
• Viktor Arvidsson
• Derek Ryan
• John Klingberg
• Trent Frederic
• Kasperi Kapanen
• Mattias Ekholm
• Adam Henrique
• Vasily Podkolzin
• Jake Walman
• Troy Stecher
• Noah Philp
• Ty Emberson
• Brett Kulak
• Mattias Janmark