The Edmonton Oilers have a Darnell Nurse problem | Why the Oilers need more from Nurse

The Edmonton Oilers have a Darnell Nurse problem | Why the Oilers need more from Nurse

It’s painful to admit the Edmonton Oilers have a Darnell nurse problem. [Music] You are Locked On Oilers, your daily podcast on the Edmonton Oilers, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hello everyone and welcome to this Tuesday edition of Locked On Oilers. I am your host Nick Sarus. This is my fourth NHL season here as a host on the Lockdown podcast network and I want to thank everyone that is making Locked on Oilers their first listen of the day. Locked on Oilers is a part of the Lockdown Podcast Network where we’ve got your team covered every single day. Today’s show is brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app. Visit fanuel.com and win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. So, on today’s very busy pre-auto Senators game edition of Locked on Oilers, we’re going to talk about the Darnell Nurse problem. And we’re going to approach it from a few different perspectives. We’re going to start out with just talking about the player in a vacuum. We’ll talk about his strengths, his weaknesses, and what that means for the NHL today. Our second segment, we will pivot to talking about the numbers with star players, without star players, dependent on partner. And then in our final segment, we’ll wrap up the show talking about why this is a tough situation for the Oilers, for Chris Knoblock, for Stan Bowman, and a whole lot more. So to start out, and we talk about this a lot here on lockdown Oilers, there is no such thing as a bad NHL player. If a player continually makes mistakes, makes the same mistake over and over again, a weakness within their game, is exploited repeatedly, they are not being put in a position to succeed. And fundamentally, I do agree with that notion. I think if you are capable of getting to the NHL level, you have something in your toolbox. And maybe it’s just a trait. Maybe you’re just big, maybe you’re just fast. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be a hockey associated skill set necessarily. You don’t need to be a great puck mover. You don’t need to be a great shooter. But if you’re big or you skate well or both, you’re going to be given opportunities. And when it comes to defenseman in the NHL, we know that as far as the perception in regards to traits, we know bigger defensemen are always going to be prioritized. We know big defensemen who can move well are going to be treated as extremely valuable assets. And at face value, Darnell Nurse is a pretty good skating defenseman. Now, he’s not in the Kale Mar tier of defenders as far as skating. He’s not Quinn Hughes. He’s not an elite skating defenseman, but I testwise, Darnell Nurse moves pretty well. Darnell Nurse looks like a player who can be effective at the NHL level and that’s not a very high threshold to say the least, but Nurse moves reasonably well and he’s an above average skater both in terms of the top skating speed and bursts within the highest category of speed. So that tells you at a baseline the Oilers have a player that they are not using properly. And some of that is tied to what we’re going to talk about in the final segment. The idea of why this is awkward, why this is a painful situation for the Oilers, for their decision makers. Darnell Nurse right now is probably a third pair defenseman. He is probably a sparingly used left-handed defenseman who’s going to be played with a puck mover. And I will give Nurse a slight benefit of the doubt. He started out really poorly last year, and we’ll dive into those numbers, this year’s first five games versus last year’s first five games. But make no mistake about it, this is an active problem costing the Oilers games. And real quick as an aside in this opening segment, I don’t think Darnell Nurse is the Oilers’s biggest problem right now, the fact that this team, which features McDavid, which features Dry Cidle, which features Evan Bousard, is having a hard time scoring more than two goals per night, that’s a fundamental flaw. That is a team not playing the way it’s supposed to. If you had told me the Oilers were going to come into this year and it was going to be very much the same as last year, the defense was going to be a mess, the goalending was going to be a mess, but they were going to score a lot, their power play would get on track, and they’d be able to outscore their wos until things settled down, I would have believed you. In fact, if you had ran through the possibilities for the start of this season, what they’re getting right now, which is pretty good goalending, okay defense, and non-existent offense. That’s pretty weird. And signaling out nurse might feel unfair. I I know I did one of these episodes around the same time last year because the Oilers were struggling so harshly and Nurse himself was having a miserable start last year at least. Nurse had the excuse that he was coming into the season injured. He did not play a full preseason slate. He did not ramp himself up conditioning wise. And he looked it he looked slow. He looked overmatched. And as the season went along, he got a little bit better. The Oilers played him with Brett Koulak. That made his life a little bit easier. But right now, it is not hyperbole to say that nurse is drowning out there. He is having a miserable time as far as breakouts go. And I think some of that is just a byproduct of the reality of who he’s deployed with. And I think that’s really how you should frame your expectations and what you think about Nurse as a player. The Oilers are a team who no nurse has a bad contract and they have had several different players rotate on his right. Alec Regula prying to prior to getting injured was getting pretty good results out of Darnell Nurse before he got injured in that Vancouver game. Last year in the playoffs, we saw Jake Wman and Darnell Nurse link up and have pretty good success. This year to start, we have seen a lot of Darnell Nurse with Troy Stchcher. I like Troy Stetcher. I think last year in the playoffs, Troy Stcher when Matias he was out was doing a pretty good job. I think Troy Stetcher is a pretty solid seventh defenseman. Somebody who rotates in whose only real obligation is going to be moving the puck. We know he’s on the smaller side. defenses for checkers are going to be able to knock him off of pucks. They’re going to be able to win puck battles against him. And that only puts more of a microscope on Darnell Nurse’s play. And right now, when you get the puck in deep against Nurse and Stcher, Stetcher’s losing puck battles, Nurse can’t move the puck where it needs to go. Whether that’s to Stetcher, for Ster to break it out, or for Nurse himself to directly pass to whoever is supposed to receive that open pass. And you are killing time. And when you are playing against a team where you smell blood in the water like that and you can keep them on their heels, you start to turn the tide in the game. And that’s where you get these environmental factors that start to kick in. Yes, they’re not getting outscored that badly. They’re only being outscored 3 nothing through the first se six games with nurse on the ice, but you are consistently in your own end. you are consistently having to try and break out and that fatigue, that stress that accumulates and it might not be the next shift out and night, but when a team is consistently able to get pucks in deep against you to forch checkck your defenders into turnovers to force them into mistakes, you start to wear down and nurse might not even be on the ice for the shift where the eventual goal comes, but because your defenders, because your goalie, because your forwards have been out there, they’ve been in their own ends. They can’t get to offense that easily. They’re struggling to break out of their own zone. The game starts to spend more of the time in the Edmonton zone. And over time, the more time you spend in your own zone, the more likely it is the other team’s going to score. Now, there are some caveats to that. There is a lot of junk volume against Arnold Nurse when he’s out there, but that junk volume does eventually accumulate and start to wear down on defenses. We are going to take our first break on today’s edition of Lockdown Oilers. When we come back, I’m going to tell you what the underlying numbers say about Darnell Nurse’s performance so far. Hint, it’s bad. The NFL season is here and FanDuel has an offer you don’t want to miss because right now, new FanDuel customers can bet just $5 and get $300 in bonus bets if you win. That’s right. Pick a bet, put down five bucks, and if that bet hits, you’ll unlock $300 in bonus bets to use on the FanDuel app. I love using FanDuel because it gives me so many ways to play. You can build parlays, try player props, or if you were watching a game and you feel the momentum shifting underfoot in real time, live lines during the game mean the game is never over. 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I think ultimately, and I I should have prefaced this entire episode by saying this, I think the Oilers are going to be fine. I think they might be in trouble right now, but I do think adversity is good. I do think adversity leads you to answers about your team and whether those are internal or external and external answers are valid. If we get to the end of December and the Oilers are still struggling to score, we know the Oilers are going to go out and get a forward. Now, who how much they’re going to cost, that’s all for the pro personnel department to figure out. But right now in the Oilers pecking order of problems, it’s a lot easier for me to point and say, look at Nurse’s underlying numbers in relation to when he plays with McDavid, when he plays with Dry Cidle, than it is to say, well, Mapani and Tom Michek and Seavoi and Howard and Philp and Henrik and NG and going down and on and on and on on the list. I mean, there’s a reason we talked about 11 different forwards last Thursday once you got Jack Russell in the mix as far as how much Chris Knoblock trusts them because I think he genuinely is trying to get a feel for this team. And I think this is one of the byproducts of a deemphasized preeason is that coaches spend these first few weeks trying to figure out who’s a good match with who. Because back in the day, you would have resolved that during the preseason, but because you’re not going to subject your players to the risks of playing in games that don’t matter, this is the chemistry process sorting itself out. And when we get to the underlying numbers, they’re pretty bad. So, through these first handful of games, when Darnell Nurse is on the ice, the Oilers are out chanced 81 to 110. That’s pretty significant. They are outshot 47 to 40. Okay, that’s not that bad. They’ve been outscored 3-0. Again, that’s not crazy. Three goals against 04. That’ll get sorted out because the Oilers will eventually score with nurse on the ice. But it does tell you it’s been difficult for them to get offensive zone time. And then expected goals 1.964 4.38 against and then 8 to 21 high danger chances for and against. That tells you straight up when nurse is on the ice, opponents are spending that shift in the Oilers end of the rink. They are putting pressure on Steuart Skinner or Calvin Pickard. They are forcing Nurse. They are forcing Stcher or whomsoever, whether it’s Koulak, whether it’s Regula, whoever they are out there, whoever is out there, I should say, with Nurse is spending that shift on their heels. And they’ve only been outscored three nothing. But that downhill, that accumulation factor of spending offensive zone time consistently on your heels, that accumulates, that is how games swing when it comes to momentum. All it takes is one mistake to end up in the back of your net. Everybody starts sulking and it’s a real problem. Look, he’s played 56 minutes with Troy Stature. He’s played about 30 with Regula. He’s got like 17 with Brett Koulak. Stature and him are getting caved in right now. Him and Regula had reasonable numbers, but Regula just got put on IR on Monday afternoon, so it seems like it’ll be a little while for him. And we’ll talk about Jake Walman coming back, what that means for Nurse in our final segment because I do think that’s going to make a difference. But to me, the story of the Oilers, as it’s been for a long time now, will ultimately end up being what can Connor and Leon do at five on five in particular when they’re apart from each other. So far this year, when McDavid is playing with Nurse, the Oilers have 41% of the scoring chances, 45% of the shots on goal. The Oilers have yet to score a goal with McDavid on the ice with Darnell Nurse. They have 29% of the expected goals and then 25% of the high danger chances. When Conor McDavid is on the ice with Darnell Nurse, the Oilers are getting thumped. Not just like, oh, they’re they are getting thumped. And the tell is that they have a good save percentage. If in McDavid and uh Nurse’s minutes they had like an eight something save percentage at five on five, you could write that off as the goalending not being good. But the simple matter of the fact is they are getting caved in at five on five in McDavid’s minutes overlapping with Darnell Nurse. And if McDavid is getting killed at five on five with Nurse and then he’s playing pretty well away from him, that’s a tell. And then same deal when you go to Leon. 31.5% of the scoring chances, 40% of the shots on goal, 0% of the goals, they’ve been outscored, 25% of the expected goals, 25% of the high danger chances. That’s not going to play. And yes, again, as an aside, the Oilers will eventually score with Darnell Nurse on the ice. So, the goal share will even out a little bit, but 25% of high danger chances when Nurse is on the ice, that’s actively killing you. That means when you are out there on the ice, the other team is getting three quarters of the best offense in the game. Three quarters of the offense that’s likely to result in a goal. So, what is that telling you? It’s telling you that teams are getting the puck a lot more in the Oilers zone than they are the Oilers in the other team zone. It tells you not only are they getting more zone time, they’re getting more dangerous chance creation. They are getting pucks to the dangerous areas of the ice. So, Nurse isn’t suppressing chances against, he isn’t help facilitating defense to offense. When he does get to the offensive zone, and I talked about this on yesterday’s show, he’s having so many sequences die on the end of his stick. He is ending up in positions. He is ending up in situations where he has an opportunity to make a decision. And this is the hardest component of trying to fix a veteran player who’s struggling because for Darnell Nurse, who is a long tenure NHL veteran at this point, you as a coach are going to have a hard time convincing him, hey, I know you’ve been doing this for 10 years at the NHL level. I need you to do something else. Because in the back of Nurse’s mind, he’s going to say to himself, “Well, my instincts are what got me here. My instincts are why I’ve been in the National Hockey League as long as I have. My instincts are the reason that Ken Holland gave me that big contract that we can’t get rid of now.” So, I know in my heart that Nurse wants to be better. He wants to play better. He wants the Oilers to win. At the same time, I can look at his decision-m. I can look at his shot selection, his attempts at breakout passes, when he chooses to pinch versus when he chooses to recede in the offensive zone to defend the blue line. I can look at all of those and say, “This is a player who has a utility. The Oilers are not putting him in a position where he can be as useful as he can be. He is struggling in the way he’s choosing to play and in the way the Oilers are using him.” That’s what leads us to the awkward conversation. And coming up next, I’m going to explain why the Oilers have an awkward decision to make. Let’s be honest, most of us can’t even name all our financial accounts, let alone what they’re worth. Between 401ks, savings, and investments, it’s so easy to lose track, and that can mean leaving money on the table. That’s why I started using Monarch, an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean, easy to use interface on your laptop or phone. Monarchs help me organize my accounts, track my spending with categorization, and get a better handle on my investments. And most importantly, I am not using spreadsheets to keep track of my money. Monarch’s visual dashboards and smart tools make it so easy to understand where my money is going and how I can make it work harder for me. Don’t let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code locked on NHL at monarchmoney.com for 50% off your first year. One more time, monarch.com code locked on NHL for half off your first year’s subscription. Thank you so much to everybody who is hanging out on this Tuesday edition of Lockdown Oilers as we are unpacking the early season struggles of Darnell Nurse. And when it comes to talking about decision makers, stakeholders, players, we need to talk about it in more than just hockey terms. And I know there is a romanticized notion about sports. That players, coaches, general managers, they are always going to do what is best for the team. that your sportsmanlike identity, that you have a gentlemanly standard to uphold, that you are not going to put your own interests before the team, and then you reach reality. And this is not me trying to condemn a 100red years of sports culture. I understand a lot of why things are the way they are. But I do think we can have an honest conversation about how decisions get made at the professional level. I think NHL teams in particular, and this is not unique to hockey, but hockey is the sport I partake in the discourse the most, I read the most, I watch the most. So when I watch a team have a player like Nurse who makes a lot of money, who cannot be traded, who cannot be put on waiverss, who is good friends with the Oilers best players, and has some insulation around him. He has some social capital, if you will, if you’re Stan Bowman, if you’re Chris Knoblock, you’re going to burn some of that responsibility for choosing to play that guy. And I know and I can put my hand up. I know my priorities as a podcaster, as just a fan of the team are different than that of the general manager and the coach. That if Chris Knobblock chooses to healthy scratch Darnell nurse as a punitive measure for floor play, I know that will have repercussions. I know that will annoy some of the other guys on the team. I know that will annoy nurse. I know that as Chris Knobblock, as Stan Bowman, you only have so many cards to play. There are only so many tactical or political decisions you can make when it comes to your lineup and your roster management. And in that case, you have to pick and choose your battles. And I think it’s worth having a conversation about maybe reducing nurses minutes, about maybe trying to find a more tailored specialized role to get better hockey out of him because we all know he’s not going anywhere. His contract is as bulletproof as it gets in the NHL. Unless nurse wants to be traded, he wants to be bought out, he wants to be, there is no avenue in which the Oilers can move on from him, which means he has almost unlimited capital. He can effectively do whatever he wants. And this creates a problem. When you create those types of double standards, you can erode your credibility with other guys. And Connor and Leon are friends with him. N is friends with him. So those guys might not. But if you’re an Ike Howard, a Matthew Seavoy, if you’re David Tomashek, if you’re Noah Phelp, if you’re Tai Emerson, and you’re busting your butt and you’re trying really hard to prove to Chris Knoblock, I deserve to play more. I deserve this, I deserve that, I want to win. Well, I’m out here busting my butt. And that guy’s killing us. That guy is playing so badly. He is making Conor McDavid and Leon Dryidle ineffective hockey players. That’s unacceptable. If I am a young guy, it makes me frustrated. It grinds my gears that I am trying as hard as I possibly can just to stay in the lineup. You know, if you’re Noah Filth, if you’re Ike Howard, if you’re one of those guys who doesn’t have a lot of credibility, but is trying really hard, is playing well, but maybe not being noticed, you can feel like you’re playing into a vacuum, that what you’re doing does not matter. That creates an environment that creates a double standard, and that can push young guys the wrong way. And this is one of those delicate lines that good teams and great teams struggle with from time to time. You need to find a way to integrate those young guys without upsetting the established hierarchy. And maybe you could argue hockey has banked too much on hierarchies and tradition and that if teams were more willing to try out young players who might be bad as opposed to veterans who are bad, they would solve a lot of their own issues. But the way I explain this and the way I think about it to not lose my mind, it is about more than just the on ice results. And for the Oilers, they have made the strategic decision, the coaching decision that they are better off with Darnell Nurse playing in this capacity, struggling because of what he means to the culture and the vibe of the team. in spite of the fact he’s struggling. Then if they healthy scratched him, they run into an awkward situation where a if the replacement who’s only really playing because nurse is being disciplined or punished for playing poorly outplays him, then you have the really awkward conversation of this guy makes 9 and a4 million. Why is the guy who’s making two $750,000 to $2 million outplaying him? Then you have a real crisis on your hands. And this is not me insinuating there’s some vast conspiracy to keep nurse in the lineup. I think it’s a lot simpler than that. He is a veteran. They pay a lot of money to they are inclined to let him try and figure it out because they give him so much money because the veterans on the team like him. Because there is that established social credit. And is this fair? Absolutely not. But as we know sports are fundamentally unfair. These are human beings making decisions that are supposed to be rational but don’t need to be. You can do an awful lot as a coach, as a general manager, president of hockey operations, owner of a team without being rational, with riding on your feelings. And right now, I struggle to believe that this Darnell Nurse decision is rooted in anything other than trying to manage the situation from an optics and a vibes perspective, a feelings perspective. And that is Chris Knobblock’s prerogative. Now, I could play devil’s advocate and say, would Chris Knoblock be so patient if his job were on the line? And I think there might be a bit more of a serious conversation about maybe pulling him from the lineup. But with the credibility he’s established, with the connections he has to this group, with the connections he has to Conor McDavid, who the organization has oriented this entire team around, I get why we’re at where we’re at when it comes to nurse. But real quick, Jake Wman coming back is good. Jake Wman can do some of the lifting that nurse has struggled with. And Wman is a strong skater. He is a great puck mover. He has a great shot. All of those are factors that should help. Yes, he’s probably going to play on his off side. Yes, Nurse is struggling harshly. But you give him somebody who can actually break the puck out and that will resolve some of the Oilers issues. But that will just about do it for this edition of Locked On Oilers. Thank you so much to everybody who made Lockdown Oilers their first listen of the day. Please be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. If you’re on Apple or Spotify, please leave the show a fivestar review. If you’re watching over on YouTube, hit that subscribe button. Hit that alarm bell. And if you’re so inclined, be sure to check out Locked on NHL Game Night covering every game, every night until a Stanley Cup champion is crowned. Get local analysis on a national scale. Find NHL Game Night on Locked on NHL or on YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I will talk to you guys tomorrow after the Senators game. Until then, let’s go Oilers.

The Edmonton Oilers face a crucial personnel issue in the performance of defenseman Darnell Nurse. Host Nick Zararis breaks down Nurse’s performance in the early stages of the Oilers’ season revealing concerning impacts on the team’s stars like Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Nick explores the complex team dynamics surrounding the situation and why it isn’t just as easy as Kris Knoblauch changing Nurse’s role in the lineup.

3:07 Nurse’s skating ability and baseline skills

6:40 Issues with Nurse and Stetcher pairing

9:43 Underlying numbers show Nurse struggling

14:50 McDavid and Draisaitl’s stats with Nurse

19:58 The awkward situation for Oilers management

24:34 Balancing veteran status vs on-ice performance

27:07 Jake Walman’s return could help Nurse

The Edmonton Oilers have a Darnell Nurse problem | Why the Oilers need more from Nurse

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