- Chris Pronger thinks the Oilers will feel the Darnell Nurse trade more than Edmonton fans expect
- Pronger says the $9.25 million cap hit, not the play, is what turned the fan base against Nurse
- Read below for what Pronger said and how Edmonton has tried to fill the hole on the blue line
Chris Pronger is not sold on the idea that Edmonton got better this summer.
The Hall of Fame defenseman was asked on Morning Cuppa Hockey how the Oilers will look on the back end without Darnell Nurse, who was shipped to San Jose on July 1. Pronger turned the question into a warning.
“Right now, we’re going to see how Edmonton does without Darnell Nurse. He’s been out of favour there since he signed that big contract,” Pronger said. “While he may not have lived up to the salary number, he was an important piece.”
Catch the full episode:
Pronger’s read is that the salary did the damage, not the hockey. He walked through how the same player gets judged at a lower number.
“If you had Darnell Nurse at six, six and a half [million], you’re not looking at him in that light, you’re looking at him like, ‘okay, we’re getting fair value,’” Pronger said. “Sometimes our perception on players solely revolves on how much money they’re making, the biases we have for different things, players, styles of play and all the rest of that.”
Nurse held a no-movement clause and had to sign off on any deal. He expanded his list of acceptable teams on July 1, and Stan Bowman got the entire $9.25 million cap hit off the books with zero salary retained, a detail Elliotte Friedman flagged while the trade was still coming together.
San Jose sent back defenseman Shakir Mukhamadullin and prospect Zack Sharp.
Whatever the price tag looked like, the workload was real. Nurse averaged north of 22 minutes a night in seven of his last nine seasons and played all 798 of his NHL games in an Oilers sweater.
Edmonton replaced him with Mukhamadullin and free agent signing Ryan Shea, neither of whom has ever handled top-pair minutes against the best forwards in the West. That is a lot of ice time to hand out on a blue line that already leaked goals in the playoffs.
Camp opens next month. Edmonton finds out in a hurry what those 22 minutes were worth.
