Value of: Darnell Nurse

Junohockeyfan

Registered User
Dec 16, 2018
15,088
12,823
Nurse has skill to gain control of the puck and push it up the ice. But in this scenario, he’s often passing to McDrai and they’re doing the work. It’s not that there’s no value in that but on the Oilers is the value of doing that over 9 million? Then, you consider his vast amount of soul crushing errors on defense and it’s fair to question where he’s a fit.

If you start at 9.25 M and consider he has some skill, you rationalize his worth more generously. But if you look at his greater role as not making big mistakes, his value is significantly less.

And that’s why you see disparity in opinions. Some see his mistakes. Some see his secondary assists to McDrai. WithNurse, the focus on mistakes seems to always become more intenisified in the playoffs.
He got exposed badly by Vegas. But IMO, he's overplayed. You should never have your 2nd pairing dmen playing against the opposing teams's best players for 24+ mins a game.

Putting aside his egregious salary, if Nurse is on a 2nd pairing, he will be an effective dman. Oilers need top-pairing D.
 

John Mandalorian

2022 Avs: The First Dance
Nov 29, 2018
11,643
7,363
He exposed badly by Vegas. But IMO, he's overplayed. You should never have your 2nd pairing dmen playing against the opposing teams's best players for 24+ mins a game.
He *might be overplayed. You could be right. He could make less bad judgment plays (by not being over extended). But it’s not a guarantee.
 

biturbo19

Registered User
Jul 13, 2010
27,230
12,378
Its not a good contract by any means but not close to the worst. Nurse is a 2nd pairing dman making 9+ million.

Since you want stats, concrete facts and figures...would you care to mention the current contracts that are actually worse?


Sure, proportionally you can try to downplay how overpaid he is. But in terms of actual gross impact, it far outstrips pretty much anything i can think of. It's simply crossed into that threshold of $$$ that absolutely has to be a key, core player. Which i don't think you want to rely on Nurse to be. It's at that point where, the amount he is "overpaid" could actually buy you an entirely extra pretty good player.

It's also an extremely long contract, so you're stuck building around Nurse until 2030. That's pretty catastrophic. I'm really struggling to come up with a worse contract.

Quinn looked fine on offense.......

And he looked fine defensively with Bear too. Obviously Hughes has been a player who, unlike Nurse...appears to still be growing exponentially defensively. But he was absolutely fine and part of his growth in that part of the game actually came while playing with Bear.


There's a reason pretty much every Canucks fan, and it sounds like Canucks management are very gung ho to get Bear signed and back into the lineup as soon as he's healthy and ready to go.
 

ManofSteel55

Registered User
Aug 15, 2013
33,539
14,044
Sylvan Lake, Alberta
You can assign some blame to him for missing the net, but what percentage of blame do you assign to Nurse for forgetting there are two NHL hockey players behind him and leaking a totally preventable 2 on 0?
Just as much as everyone else on the ice. That wasn't a Nurse breakdown, it was a total system breakdown.

As usual, the highlight reel works against Nurse. But also as usual, the stats show he hasn't been as bad as most think he is. He plays the most minutes, against the toughest competition and his pair still has the lowest goals against per 60 and shots against per 60 on the team. Nurse's issue are that he is 1 - 2 M overpaid, and when he has breakdowns, they are highlight reel level breakdowns.
 

StreetHawk

Registered User
Sep 30, 2017
29,027
11,235
No flexibility with the Nurse contract. On a high salary portion now, but that drops to be almost all SB in the final 4 seasons. So, no buyout option. At 29 this year, what you have seen, both good and bad, is what you are going to get over the next 4-5 years.
 

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