One surprising Edmonton Oilers d-man could help Team Canada win at the Four Nations tournament this February, but it’s not to be.
Darnell Nurse won’t be making Team Canada’s roster, which was announced today.
But there are few NHL d-men playing more effective hockey right now than Nurse. He’s at long last shrugged off both injury and a mediocre-to-atrocious run of play. In November and December Nurse has been killing it as a two-way player, playing some of the best hockey of his NHL career, even as he missed three games due to injury after a head shot from Toronto’s Ryan Reaves.
Edmonton’s Connor McDavid will lead Team Canada, with Mattias Ekholm and Viktor Arvidsson already named to Team Sweden, but there will be not expected to be other Oilers on Team Canada, not Evan Bouchard, Zach Hyman, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Stuart Skinner, who all went into the season as strong possibilities for the elite roster, and not Nurse.
Nurse was never in the running, not after his two-way play collapsed in the 2024 Stanley Cup playoffs, where he leaked Grade A shots against. But perhaps what we saw then was injury getting the best of a solid player. He’s certainly proven in his most recent stretch of games that he’s capable of raising his game to a high level. He’s played some of the best, if not the best, defensive hockey of his career, and he’s been chipping in on the attack.
In saying that Nurse could help Team Canada win, I’m not arguing he’s a better pick than Devon Toews, Shea Theadore or Josh Morrissey. He’s not. But if the team is in need of defensive toughness and solid two-way play, Nurse would help, possibly as much as extra d-man Travis Sanheim of Philadelphia, a relatively untested playoff player.
Nurse played at a higher level even strength than both Bouchard and Ekholm in this recent stretch of games.
On defence, Nurse has made just 1.11 major mistakes on Grade A shots per game (15 min es), while Bouchard has been at 1.76 per game and Ekholm, 1.44. Nurse’s rate of mistakes is as low as we saw with shutdown d-men Adam Larsson and Kris Russell when they were in their prime in Edmonton.
On the attack, Nurse has chipped in on 1.43 Grade A shots per game, lower than Bouchard, 1.76, but higher than Ekholm, 1.24.
Of course some folks will argue that this recent great run of games from Nurse doesn’t merit his inclusion on Team Canada, that he still can’t be trusted with such a job. It’s a fair argument. But it’s not the first time Nurse has played at a high level. For years he was talked about in the Team Canada context due to his solid two-way play. In many ways, the anomaly for Nurse was the poor stretch of play we saw from him starting last January and concluding this October. It’s still not clear how much injury factored into that poor play, though we do know Nurse was playing hurt much of that time.
In any case, he’s back now, which is crucial news for the Oilers, who have invested much in Nurse and won’t be able to win the Stanley Cup until he brings his ‘A’ game in the playoffs.
In the end, from an Oilers perspective, it’s good news that so few Oilers will be in this tournament. It gives players like Hyman, RNH and Nurse time off to rest and relax and get reading for the critical 2025 playoff run.
