The harsh reality of a Darnell Nurse buyout

The Edmonton Oilers have arrived, yet again, at on offseason without the Stanley Cup in tow. After two consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearances, the first-round exit this year reminds us that the Oilers still have a lot of work to do. Much has been made about the comments Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl said in their end of the season interviews. While I personally believe they may have been overly negative, it’s hard to blame them for their pessimism and hard to deny the truth of what they had to say.

The Oilers are, as Draisaitl said, trending in the wrong direction. It is also true, as Draisaitl stated, that the future is very unclear for the Oilers. McDavid is currently under contract for two more years and after that, who knows honestly. McDavid signing a short two-year contract right smack dab in the middle of his prime could be read as a message to management that they have two years to put a better team on the ice. This contract is essentially unheard of for someone in McDavid’s position. Although I wonder if he didn’t just sign a short-term high-salary contract in his prime so he can end his career on a long-term high salary contract to make more money. In his relatively unique position I think that would work well.

Pardon my digression. The fact is that the Oilers appear to be regressing. Beyond the obvious fact that the Oilers didn’t make it near as far in the playoffs this year, the Oilers had their highest GA/GP in eight years. While some of this blame can be laid on the goalies’ shoulders, I personally believe that the defence also needs to be propped up somehow.

One of the main question marks on defence for many years now has been Darnell Nurse.

The Darnell Nurse contract and cap hit

In the summer of 2021 Nurse signed an eight-year, $9.25M AAV contract after scoring 36 points in 56 games the previous season. This amounts to a 53-point pace over a full 82-game season, a pace that Nurse has not yet achieved since. Not generally the kind of production that attracts a $9.25M salary for eight years.

Over the course of his career, Nurse’s on-ice 5v5 underlying stats honestly aren’t that bad. In general they have been slightly above 50%, signifying that he is a liability less than he is an asset. However, this year we saw a marked drop in those numbers. CF%, FF%, GF%, SCF%, and HDGF% all sat below the 50% mark. The most important, Goals For %, was especially bad at 44.35%.

While Nurse’s on-ice 5v5 stats aren’t completely egregious—there are a lot of NHL defencemen with numbers like his—what is not great are his relative stats. That is to say, how his team does with him on the ice as opposed to how they do when he’s on the bench. Nurse’s stats are all negative, meaning his team performs better with him off the ice. Relative stats have faults, but it’s not great to be in the negative.

A lot of these numbers would be acceptable as they aren’t even the worst on the team, let alone in the league. However, combined with the facts that Nurse’s offensive stats seem to be dropping and he takes up a lot of cap space, that makes the contract difficult to stomach.

Consider a Nurse buyout

One option would be to buy out his contract. With a contract buyout the player is essentially released from the team. They receive the remainder of their base salary over a period twice the length of the remaining years. The amount that the team pays to the player each year still counts against their cap. However, since the term is stretched out, the team is paying less each year. In that way the team can unload the player and some of their salary to make room for a replacement.

Some of the pros here: you don’t need anyone’s permission to do it. You don’t need Nurse’s permission, you don’t need another team to agree to a trade, you just lose the player. In that way, it’s easy.

You get some extra money to spend on other players which the Oilers could maybe use on a goalie.

You don’t give up any significant assets like players or prospects.

The cons to the buyout

There is a big problem with buying out Darnell Nurse. According to puckpedia.com, a player’s signing bonus still counts towards the team’s cap hit. Therefore, a player whose contract is largely made up of a signing bonus is still going be a heavy burden on the team’s cap.

Nurse’s salary is mostly a signing bonus so buying him out will relieve the cap only very little. According to puckpedia’s buyout calculator—which is the coolest thing since the serrated bread knife—the Oilers would only see $1.5M in cap relief next year, $733K the following three years, and then would actually take on a cap hit for the remaining four years of the buyout, after Nurse’s original contract would have ended.

So the only significant effect of buying out Nurse is that he wouldn’t be playing on the team any more. So the question becomes, is Nurse better than his next replacement? It isn’t 100% clear who that would be, but I am inclined to think yes, he probably is. Whatever else, he has a lot of experience. Even though this has been a down year, it was a down year for the team in general. Even though Nurse isn’t adding a lot of value, I don’t think it’s worth buying him out.