We’re days away from training camp and Darnell Nurse does not have a contract yet. No big deal, right? Wrong!

I honestly haven’t been too concerned over the past couple of weeks with Nurse’s contract negotiations taking so long. I was very confident that the two parties would be able to work something out. Nurse wants to play hockey, and the Oilers want him to play hockey with them. Easy, right? Well it seemed easy until Bob McKenzie started talking about how he doesn’t think the contract negotiations are going well at all. Take a look for yourself:

Reported on by Chris Nichols, McKenzie seems very hesitant about the current contract talk. All summer we’ve been guessing that the contract would land somewhere between $3.3-3.5 million per year for a two year bridge deal. HOWEVER, last week Darren Dreger stated that he’d be surprised if Nurse gets anything over $3 million per year.  This was a little unsettling as Darnell Nurse deserves way more than three million per year. Especially since we signed Mikko Koskinen to $2.5 million this past summer.

Darnell Nurse is one of our best defenceman, and his contract definitely shouldn’t have been left for last, especially after Caggiula’s and Benning’s. Although I don’t know what the discussions are about inside those rooms, it just seems confusing to me the way this is turning out. We are now left with very limited cap space, not leaving much for Darnell. I’m sure he doesn’t feel too great about that either.

With training camp approaching quickly and Bob McKenzie dropping this truth bomb on us, I’m starting to get a little stressed out. What do you guys think, is this thing going to get done before camp begins?