The season wasn’t ideal for the @Edmonton Oilers from a team perspective, missing the playoffs again and breaking the hearts of fans in the 780/587 (and beyond) area code. But, there were some bright spots for individual players having breakout years. @Darnell Nurse was one of them, playing a full 82 games for the second consecutive season and shattering his career-high in points with 41, an increase of 15 from the previous season.

Nurse finished second on the team in average TOI/GM, behind only @Oscar Klefbom by a measly 10 seconds, while proving his multi-tooled arsenal finishing third in shorthanded TOI on the entire team and second in powerplay TOI amongst defensemen (again, behind only Klefbom).

But, what do the advanced counts have to say about his breakout season?

Well, admittedly, not ideal. The possession numbers aren’t fantastic, and not anywhere where they need to be when comparing to the past ten winners of the award.

Those are some impressive numbers. The standard set in terms of point totals is certainly a bar that Nurse could reach should his point production continue to increase at the rate that it has the past three seasons. The hinderance would be the Corsi numbers, and it’s hard to reasonably argue his possession counts can increase by nearly 10% or more in a single season to reach that benchmark.

However, there are two factors here that could make that a possibility. The first being that last column in the above chart. Team Corsi will have an effect on a player’s individual count in a way that is unavoidable (@Connor McDavid had a CF% of 49.93 last season…) so it really depends on how the team is performing as a whole. I’ve written about the Tippett Effect before, but it’s worth reiterating here that when the took over the @Phoenix Coyotes from Wayne Gretzky in the summer of 2009, he was inheriting a team that had just come off the previous season with a 45.40CF%, which was dead-last in the NHL, a goal differential of -44, and a penalty kill running at 76.8%, which was 28th back when the NHL was a nice, round 30 teams. In his first year, Tippett improved the Coyotes to a 52.09CF%, which was 7th in the NHL; reversed the goal haemorrhaging to a +23 differential, and pulled the PK up from the depths of Special Teams Hell and ran it at 84.5%. good for 6th in the league. All this is to say that the ground-work is there to close the Oilers’ possession black holes and give the players’ individual counts a nice rub.

The other factor is the defensive partner. We all know who was Nurse’s most frequent partner, so let’s just get into the numbers.

It’s interesting to see how the numbers fluctuated here. Nurse’s Corsi went up (but that count is always skewed when it comes to Russell because of the high number of blocks he has), but both the actual and expected Goals For percentages took a dip.

But for the 2019-20 season, this isn’t a pairing that we shouldn’t have to concern ourselves with too much (at least to start the season), if the defensive pairings in preseason are to be believed to be the plan for the season.

Nurse has been, and will be, lining up next to @Adam Larsson for the foreseeable future. We all know that Larsson and Klefbom was the most the most consistent pairing for the Oilers over the last two seasons, so what can be expected for Nurse from his new partner.

Very similar in possession counts, but without the goal-scoring. That will no doubt increase playing with Nurse and the 50+ points he should be getting will spike that metric.

Now, it’s only a small sample-size so far, but we may have an idea how the two might look together this season…

This is no doubt a stretch. Nurse has had issues with his passing, and that hinders him from getting prime powerplay time. But, the inevitable pairing with Larsson (at least to start the season), leaving Klefbom with a less-experienced partner– whether that be @Joel Persson once he returns from injury, or should @Ethan Bear end up holding the spot– it would seem that the Nurse-Larsson pairing will be the featured one. This means that Nurse will have a very good chance of usurping Klefbom for the most TOI/GM on the team. That, coupled with another leap in point totals and handling opposing teams’ best players is setting the stage for Nurse to get some increased recognition.

Of course, this will only work in the favour of the player when it comes time to negotiating his next contract. The Oilers might have to be thinking about having a little more cap space come the next few seasons…