The Oilers almost never have elite d-men: we rarely acquire them through trades (having Pronger for a while was fun), and we haven't developed any since the '80s.
It's kind of exciting to see Nurse and Bouchard maybe becoming something special, and with Nurse at 28, coming into his prime, it doesn't seem like a smart move to trade him.
Pretty much all of the cup winners of the last 40 years had an elite d-man so the Oilers can't afford to back-slide at all at D if they wanna consider themselves a legit contender.
I'm not saying Nurse is elite like Pronger, but Ekholm isn't either, so we seem to need to do this by committee.
Nurse plays against the best competition with a good +/-, he's tough, he can chip in with some goals, etc.
I know that +/- isn't a popular stat, but he's top 20 in the league and he isn't one of the guys who got there with cherry-picked minutes, with an elite partner, against weak opposition, etc. He earned every bit of that himself.
Speaking of winning the Cup, Kostin was the exact type of 3rd/4th line player that you need to win in the playoffs, and his offensive instincts were developing quite nicely here. I really hate that he's gone. I don't see a replacement on the roster, either.
