Should the Edmonton Oilers trade Darnell Nurse?

This is part three of my four part series on what the Edmonton Oilers should do with Darnell Nurse this offseason. I have explored the options of buying out Nurse’s contract, as well as holding onto him. Today I will look at the the tantalizing prospect of trading Nurse.

This is what I would consider, at least at first glance, the best possible option for dealing with Nurse. The problem, as I’ll show in this article, is that trading him is probably an extremely difficult prospect. Even more unlikely is finding a favourable trade for him. The first thing I learned in my Econ 101 class (It was actually Econ 111) was that people trade because it benefits both parties. I think what we’ll see while looking at this situation is that the word benefit can be stretched really far.

These are the pros, cons, and difficulties of trading Darnell Nurse.

Why the Oilers should trade Nurse

The pros of trading Nurse are pretty evident. First and foremost is his contract. In the 2021 offseason Nurse signed an eight-year, $9.25M AAV extension that came into effect for the 2022–23 season. At the time of signing, the contract constituted 11.21% of the salary cap. Other NHL defencemen with a similar AAV include Cale Makar, Zach Werenski, Charlie McAvoy, Adam Fox, Noah Dobson, Roman Josi, Jakob Chychrun, Moritz Seider, Brock Faber, Mikhail Sergachev, Miro Heiskanen, John Carlson, and Victor Hedman. Five Norris trophies have been given to the players on that list, probably six after this year. I hate being so hard on a guy, but Nurse just doesn’t measure up.

The second reason, although it’s tied to the first, is that Nurse leaves a lot to be desired as a defenceman. As I talked about in my last article, Nurse generally ranks below average in the on-ice, underlying metrics. In the past, it was possible to justify some of that defensive play with above average offensive stats. However, those are dwindling as well. Nurse hit his career best (so far) three years ago with 43 points. Since then he has put up 32, then 33, and finally 24 this year. While this could just be a down year, or few years, just by watching him play it doesn’t look like he will bring his game back.

The contract has been a significant burden on the Oilers since it’s signing, at a time when they could really use the money for other purposes, like a goalie. As I stated in the last article, most people wouldn’t be very upset with Darnell Nurse if he just made less money— although he is far from perfect, he is by no means the worst defenceman in the NHL.

The difficulty in trading Nurse

In my opinion, for the reasons given above, trading Nurse would be the ideal course of action. However, it’s hard to imagine a trade that the Oilers can be reasonably happy with that any other team is going to accept. Plain and simple, Nurse is not worth nearly what he is currently being paid.

There are actually a decent amount of other defencemen making a similar amount of money who scored a similar amount of points last regular season. Drew Doughty makes $11M and only scored 23 points, Owen Power makes $8.35M and scored 29. However, the average salary for defencemen who scored between 20 and 30 points last year was about $4.13M.

So because Nurse makes too much money and still has four years left on his contract, any straight across, one for one deal, is going to be difficult to swing. There are a couple other options though.

Potential trade options for Edmonton

The Oilers could attempt some sort of three-team trade, which have become more common in recent years. Maybe the Oilers retain $2M of Nurse’s cap and they send a pick(s) or prospect(s) to another team who takes on $4M of the cap. Then, they send Nurse to a third team who take the remainder of his salary and likely sends a player back to Edmonton. The possibilities of a trade like this are nearly endless.

However, as soon as you add a third team things start to get way more complicated. This, in my opinion, works in favour for the Oilers. A three-team trade seems like the most likely trade option. A team like the Calgary Flames—who are rebuilding and have a ton of cap space—would probably retain some of Nurse’s salary for picks or prospects. A lot of teams would be interested in Nurse if they only had to pay $3M for him.

Another option is to essentially offload Nurse’s contract to another team any way you can. There is some precedent here. In 2022 the Flames traded a first-round pick AND Sean Monahan, who had been having some injury trouble, to the Montreal Canadiens for future considerations. As far as I can tell, this means nothing, but they can’t write nothing because it’s illegal to trade something for nothing. They paid Montreal to take Monahan. The pick ended up with the New York Islanders who selected Victor Eklund 16th overall in 2025, he seems to be a pretty promising prospect.

What I have learnt in the NHL is that there is almost no player that CANNOT be traded if you’re just clever enough to think of something.

Is a Darnell Nurse trade the way to go?

In the end the Oilers have to decide whether or not accepting a bad trade is worth it to offload Nurse’s contract. If I were the GM this is the option I would be investigating the most.

It might come down to whether or not they need that money to make something else happen. Everyone wants a consistent, high end goalie, but it’s hard to come up with someone who is available and affordable.

If the Oilers have a chance at a goalie who fits the bill, but they need more money to make it happen, then maybe they will look into trading Nurse more seriously.

If they can’t find a good goalie or anything better to do with the money anyways then it’s probably better to hold onto Darnell Nurse. The later he is in his contract the easier he will be to trade.