Youre so wrong. The Oilers are going to buy Nurse out once it makes sense. If he magically waives his NMC, he'd be gone in any deal that came their way.
And 3rd best of the team means nothing there because that D core is atrocious.
That defense core (minus Ceci) got the Oilers to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals, with Nurse playing where he is now. We basically need to find Nurse a solid partner, and our defense core is fine to push for a cup run once again.
Nurse is a good 2nd pair defenseman, with flaws that come out when he tries to do too much. The issue is of course that he is paid like a #1 defenseman., and for a #1, "doing too much" shouldn't be a thing, and making those mistakes shouldn't happen either. But he is overpaid, and the Oilers need to work around that. Overpaid is not the same as being a bad player though. Nurse still has a spot on the Oilers, leading our 2nd defense pair.
If I am so wrong, can you explain what that trade actually does for Edmonton? It makes us a worse team today for sure. There's no way having Jarry as a backup is something any NHL team should be doing. Graves would do nothing but bump Brett Kulak to our 2nd pair, and we don't want that, Kulak is basically the perfect 3rd pair anchor. It gets us out of a contract of a guy who is overpaid by 2 - 3 M. per year, long term. I don't blame you for not wanting to take his contract, because you already have so much tied up in overpaid veteran defensemen, so I'm not saying Pittsburgh should do the deal, but its really a "take Edmonton's overpaid player for Pittsburgh's unwanted players" deal. That doesn't work for Edmonton.
