Back in the summer of 2021, the Edmonton Oilers lost shutdown defender Adam Larsson to the Seattle Kraken and general manager Ken Holland replaced him with Cody Ceci, who joined the team on a four-year, $13 million contract as a free agent.

During his time in Edmonton, Ceci mostly played alongside Darnell Nurse, as the duo logged 2,576 minutes together at even strength. Though the pairing ultimately posted positive on-ice shot attempt, scoring chance, and goal differentials together, they were often maligned for glaring errors in the defensive zone.

Speculation about Ceci being moved reached an all-time high ahead of last season’s trade deadline when the Oilers were among the teams interested in Calgary Flames shutdown defender Chris Tanev. Edmonton’s provincial rivals wound up trading him to the Dallas Stars and the Oilers went into the playoffs with the Nurse and Ceci pairing intact.

They remained together until the Western Conference Final when the Oilers matched up against the Stars. The Nurse and Ceci pairing had a rough couple of showings during Edmonton’s Game 2 and 3 losses and head coach Kris Knoblauch decided to make a change.

After watching the first two rounds of the playoffs from the press box, Philip Broberg was inserted into the lineup on his off-side with Nurse and Ceci was moved down to the third pairing with Brett Kulak. The new defensive pairings were successful and the Oilers won their next three games to advance to the Stanley Cup Final.

Broberg became a restricted free agent in the off-season and the Oilers didn’t have any urgency to get him signed. Come August, the young defender turned his excellent playoff performance into a two-year offer sheet with the St. Louis Blues worth $4,580,917 annually.

The Oilers traded Ceci and the final year of his $3.25 million annual contract to the San Jose Sharks shortly after Broberg signed that offer sheet with the Blues. Though Edmonton received young defender Ty Emberson in return, it seemed that Ceci was moved out so that the Oilers could match Broberg’s offer sheet. Instead, the Oilers declined and received a second-round pick as compensation.

Without either Ceci or Broberg around, the Oilers have tried four different partners with Darnell Nurse over the first few weeks of the 2024-25 season.

Nurse and the newly acquired Emberson struggled in the team’s season-opening 6-0 loss to the Winnipeg Jets and the pairing hasn’t been together much since. He’s mostly played wither either Troy Stecher or Travis Dermott, with the results of the Nurse and Stecher pairing being unsurprisingly better than the Nurse and Dermott pairing.

Interestingly enough, the best results Nurse has posted with any partner this season has been Brett Kulak, who’s usually the anchor of the team’s third pairing. Like Broberg, Kulak is a smooth-skating defender with a long reach who can play effectively on either his natural left side or when flipping over to the right side.

Though 51 minutes isn’t much of a sample size, Nurse and Kulak have dominated opponents in terms of on-ice shot attempts and scoring chances when paired together. It’s an encouraging sign because going out and finding a quality top-four defenceman to play with Nurse in November when nobody is in a rush to sell would be an incredibly daunting task.