Official NHL Thread

[diehardlionfan]

Nurse is officially extended.

It was the right thing to do.

https://www.tsn.ca/edmonton-oilers-darnell-nurse-extension-1.1678699

[diehardlionfan]

1 hour ago, RaidersAreOne said:

What the actual hell are the Oilers doing?

Getting a core piece of the team locked up. It’s a good move.

[RaidersAreOne]

15 minutes ago, diehardlionfan said:

Getting a core piece of the team locked up. It’s a good move.

Darnell Nurse is the 4th highest paid D-man in the league apparently lol. That's an extreme overpay. 

Edit: More than Makar, Heiskanen, Hamilton and Pietrangelo... good god Holland.

Edited August 6, 2021 by RaidersAreOne

[diehardlionfan]

46 minutes ago, RaidersAreOne said:

Darnell Nurse is the 4th highest paid D-man in the league apparently lol. That's an extreme overpay. 

Edit: More than Makar, Heiskanen, Hamilton and Pietrangelo... good god Holland.

That’s your opinion and I couldn’t disagree more. I would take Nurse over any of those players as well as Jones and Werenski.

He can play 30 minutes a night, leads defensemen in 5X5 scoring, is a locker room leader. Is improving and in his prime. He’s tough as nails, plays an intimidating physical game. He will fight anyone and is 26 years old. The only complaint I have is they shouldn’t have done his last bridge deal because they could’ve locked him up cheaper. Unlike Makar this contract is all UFA years not RFA.

The salary market was set by previous top D signings. You either pay him, trade him, or let him walk. In the other scenarios you have to replace his play.

Edited August 6, 2021 by diehardlionfan

[beekay414]

 

[beekay414]

14 minutes ago, diehardlionfan said:

That’s your opinion and I couldn’t disagree more. I would take Nurse over any of those players as well as Jones and Werenski.

[Forge]

Nurse is really, really bad when he's without McDavid and he spends over half his 5 on 5 time with McDavid last year, which likely accounts for his boost. Thats the biggest flag to me because I'm bullish enough on McDavid to think that he's good enough to pull up any second pairing level defender like that. 

This is definitely the current market for defensemen, and I get that they felt that they had to pay him, but this is probably a player I would have passed on doing that with. 

[Forge]

Also...it's crazy how important timing is. Cannot be understated. Last year, Toews and Girard needed new contracts. Colorado locked them up for a combined 9.1 million in a pandemic year. Nurse gets the bridge deal and signs a new deal the year after pandemic craziness, and gets more than both of those guys combined. 

[beekay414]

 

[diehardlionfan]

12 hours ago, Forge said:

Nurse is really, really bad when he's without McDavid and he spends over half his 5 on 5 time with McDavid last year, which likely accounts for his boost. Thats the biggest flag to me because I'm bullish enough on McDavid to think that he's good enough to pull up any second pairing level defender like that. 

This is definitely the current market for defensemen, and I get that they felt that they had to pay him, but this is probably a player I would have passed on doing that with. 

I think you need to analyze a bit more. Nurses time away from McDavid he was playing with bad players. The biggest knock on the Oilers was the lack of depth past the top two lines.

Nurse doesn’t play on the PP. That job falls to Barrie so Nurses production is 5X5.

Look at some of these other top paid defencemen. More than half their points come from PP time.

The other glaring fact is the absence of production from many players when playing with McDavid.

Also, Edmonton has to overpay players just as other Canadian teams do. 

[diehardlionfan]

10 hours ago, beekay414 said:

 

His statements are certainly reflective of his narrow focus.

He totally overlooks the lack of production from the bottom six. It overlooks the poor defensive play last season of his partner etc.

Analytics have their place but they are far from the whole story. It’s why NHL teams have scouting departments which are large and broken into pro and amateur. Jfresh is all about the analytics ignoring all other aspects.

Time will tell but Edmonton did not set the market. They simply reacted to it.

All the naysayers are the same people who reacted so negatively to Drai’s contract when it was signed.

https://edmontonjournal.com/sports/hockey/nhl/cult-of-hockey/leon-draisaitl-contract-blasted-as-an-overpay-says-tsns-ray-ferraro-hmm

The other simple fact is Nurse has outplayed every contract he’s signed.

Edited August 7, 2021 by diehardlionfan
Addition

[diehardlionfan]

Also, everyone being critical of the Nurse signing has failed to provide any reasonable alternatives to his signing.

How do they build a team if they’re unwilling to sign players developed internally? How do the Oilers replace him?

[Forge]

6 hours ago, diehardlionfan said:

I think you need to analyze a bit more. Nurses time away from McDavid he was playing with bad players. The biggest knock on the Oilers was the lack of depth past the top two lines.

Nurse doesn’t play on the PP. That job falls to Barrie so Nurses production is 5X5.

Look at some of these other top paid defencemen. More than half their points come from PP time.

The other glaring fact is the absence of production from many players when playing with McDavid.

Also, Edmonton has to overpay players just as other Canadian teams do. 

I mean, every defender has that issue, but Nurse's numbers are third line pairing awful without Connor last year. 

Not to mention that not everyone has Drai on a secondary line, and he was still not great with Drai. A lot of puck luck there (97% save percentage over 200 minutes ) but they gave up more scoring chances than they had and were basically dead even on high danger chances. 

He's also coming off a year where his shooting percentage as a whole doubled over his career. So Edmonton bought him high for sure in that regard. 

[Forge]

6 hours ago, diehardlionfan said:

Also, everyone being critical of the Nurse signing has failed to provide any reasonable alternatives to his signing.

How do they build a team if they’re unwilling to sign players developed internally? How do the Oilers replace him?

The alternative is that you walk away. That's always the alternative. That's what Carolina did with Dougie. They felt he wasn't worth it, they offered a contract that they felt he was worth and he moved on. Honestly, for Edmonton, that's an easier pill to digest because they could have traded him similar to what Columbus did with Seth Jones. If they are comparable players and he would have generated a comparable return, that's a pretty nice one. 

Just because you don't sign one player you developed doesn't mean that you aren't signing all players you develop. It's okay to let some people go. The devils are going to have this problem in a year when Severson comes up. If he's looking for a deal at that 7 - 8 range, I hope that they walk away. I like Severson just fine but I don't think I like him that much and he'll be hard to replace, and he's a lifelong devil that they developed...but sometimes you have to do it. 

I'm not going to argue that this the market for top tier defensemen. It certainly is. So I understand why they felt that they had to pay him that. But like Severson, I just don't like Nurse that much. The Seth Jones deal really butchered the market in my opinion because I think he's trending downward and isn't as great as we are led to believe, but that opens the door to a much wider range of players getting similar 

[Forge]

That's not to say that I think Nurse's contract is overly egregious, depending on your definition. I think I would have paid him 8x8 or maybe 8x8.25, so it's not that bad. Over the long haul, will that one million per season be a major impetus to the team? Probably not.