Who was Pittsburgh's equivalent to taking up so much of the rest of the cap that Nurse takes up?
It would be one thing if those were Edmonton's top 5 salaries, but they're not.
Well you can look at both teams (15-16 Penguins).
We've established basically the top 3 forwards + starting goalie + no.1 D on both teams takes about 53% of the cap for both teams.
So then you can look at the other 47%, there's no real law that says you can only spend one way, that 47% lets say is basically your "supporting cast".
The 15-16 Penguins primarily spent that 47% on
Patrick Hornqvist, Carl Hagelin, Chris Kunitz, Trevor Daley, Ian Cole, Justin Schultz, Eric Fehr, and then they had Matt Murray break out. That's a decent group of support players, but like I wouldn't say that's an All-Star team or something.
It's not simple to project what the Oilers would spend their 47% on in 2 years time, but for the sake of arguement lets assume it looks something like this:
Nurse, Nugent Hopkins, Ekholm (resigned likely at a lower amount/retirement deal), Matt Savoie, equivalent player to Jeff Skinner, equivalent to Viktor Arivdsson, equivalent to Brett Kulak, maybe Sam O'Rielly ...
I mean it's not that difficult to match that Penguins supporting cast. It was decent but it's not like it was loaded with stars, they spent very little on their D outside of Letang and in 16-17 they didn't have Letang which is even funnier (and really if we're being honest that 16-17 Penguins effectively blows the whole "you can't have XYZ invested in only so many player" because they effectively won with 10% of their cap on the IR).
If you're the Oilers you should be looking to win here and now, not even because of cap stuff, the rising cap will give them money to resign Bouchard and McDavid, that's not an issue. They have the team now, they damn near just won, they should be looking to win in the next year or two no matter what, not because of a salary cap but because they have the experience, they have the team already. What's there to wait for.