Since the Olympic break, the Oilers are plus-six in goals and plus-17 in shots when at least one of them is on the ice at five-on-five. They’ve even outscored the opposition in their minutes without Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl.

The trouble begins for the Oilers when their trusted duo heads to the bench. Without them, Edmonton has been outscored 23-14 and thoroughly outchanced over the past month. It’s a luxury to have two defencemen who tilt the ice so heavily while playing almost half the game, but it’s nearly impossible to win the Stanley Cup with only one reliable pair. There isn’t much time for the team to find answers to its defensive depth, but can they do it? Let’s take a look.

The second pair

Connor Murphy is the latest in a revolving door of Darnell Nurse partners this season. For the first half of the year, Nurse played most of his minutes with either Alec Regula or Jake Walman, and both duos failed to churn out positive results.

Next up was Ty Emberson, who achieved a 50 per cent expected goal share with Nurse, but a minus-three on the scoresheet. While Emberson defends well in his own end, he and Nurse both rank in the bottom one per cent of the league in entry chance prevention, according to All Three Zones’ microstat tracking. Their transition defence was too leaky to be sustainable, especially given their lack of puck-moving ability.

That brings us to the latest attempt at a usable second pair: the Nurse-Murphy duo. Early returns suggest this might be the most functional pairing yet. Murphy excels as a net-front defender and cycle-breaker, and he suppresses entry chances far more effectively than Emberson. He provides a much more reliable buffer when Nurse’s reads fail.

The pairing has a 53 per cent expected goal share, with a 38-35 edge in shots, but that’s not to say they aren’t without flaws. There’s a lot of “off the glass and out” with them, and not a ton of creativity with the puck. Murphy was acquired to address Edmonton’s leaky defence and penalty kill, not to be a primary puck-mover.

Murphy and Nurse have been outscored 3-1, so we’ll have to wait and see if the goals start to catch up to the promising underlying numbers as the sample grows. It’s hard to say whether this second pair will work with their limited puck skills, but without any ideal alternatives, it’s the most likely path the Oilers have to survive Nurse’s minutes without breaking up Ekholm and Bouchard.

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The third pair

The second pair isn’t the only one that’s been in flux this season; the Oilers’ coaching staff has also shuffled the third pair in search of answers. It started with Brett Kulak and Ty Emberson for much of the first couple of months, but Kulak struggled mightily.

At 32 years old, management likely feared Kulak’s best years were in the rear-view mirror, and so he was packaged with Stuart Skinner in the trade for Tristan Jarry.

While the trade has been a failure on Edmonton’s end so far, it is at least understandable why they decided to move on from Kulak. His minus-10 goal differential at five-on-five and rapidly declining underlying profile suggested it was a good time to turn the page.

We can criticize Stan Bowman’s asset management on this move, but that’s a discussion for another day. For now, let’s talk about what the Oilers have done with the third pair since. The same day as the Kulak trade, they acquired Spencer Stastney from the Nashville Predators, a younger left-shot defenceman who previously had success in sheltered minutes.

Stastney achieved far better results than Kulak did earlier in the season, playing with Ty Emberson on the third pair. They outscored the opposition 5-3, with a 55 per cent expected goal share in 224 minutes together. Emberson was the defensive conscience, while Stastney was the better puck mover, a logical fit.

Unfortunately, the second pair’s struggles interfered with this potentially solid third pair. Regula’s play landed him back in Bakersfield, and the Nurse-Walman duo had become far too mistake-prone to continue together, so the coaching staff broke out the line blender. They tested out Stastney on his off side with Nurse and later Walman, but he never got comfortable on either pair, especially without a more defensively responsible partner by his side.

Stastney has been scratched most nights since the Oilers acquired Murphy, and with the lineup finally back at full strength, Paul Coffey deployed Walman and Emberson on the third pair for the first time against the Tampa Bay Lightning. They were a plus-one and outshot the Lightning 9-1 together despite a rough night for the rest of the team, so there could be something between these two.

Defensive core outlook

It’s been an awkward season for the Oilers bottom two pairs. Kulak’s play got him shipped out of town, and no combination has outscored the opposition aside from Stastney and Emberson. Don’t expect that pair to be reunited anytime soon, either.

That would require scratching Murphy, or one of their most expensive defencemen, in Walman or Nurse. I wouldn’t count on it. Their most realistic solution is for the new Nurse-Murphy and Walman-Emberson duos to hit their stride.

Walman is by far the biggest X-factor going forward. Edmonton had a fantastic third pair with him and Klingberg last post-season, which played a massive role in their second straight run to the Cup final. If he and Emberson can achieve even a fraction of that success, it will give the Oilers a chance.

Edmonton has reached the final with a severely flawed defensive core before, back in 2024. To overcome it, however, they needed a 94 per cent penalty kill and arguably the greatest individual run in NHL history from Connor McDavid. That’s not a formula I can see repeating itself this spring. If they can’t get at least one of the bottom two pairs going, it’s difficult to see a path to a Cup run this season.

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