Nothing is done yet, no trade has been made, so let’s start by acknowledging that before anyone start lighting me up in the comments or arguing about what this unknown trade will look like. As of this moment, Darnell Nurse is still an Edmonton Oiler, but after Mark Spector and Elliotte Friedman reported that he’s given the team a short list of clubs he’d be willing to move to, it certainly feels like we’re getting close to the finish line on the Nurse era.

But before anyone starts dancing on his grave before a trade has even happened, I think it’s important to remember that Darnell Nurse was a good Oiler for a very long time. Maybe a trade happens happens quickly. Maybe it takes more than a minute to get done. Maybe the money situation is too hard to navigate, maybe the offered returns are awful, or maybe the Oilers look at what it will take to move him and decide they’re better off taking their time rather than rushing a deal through. All of those questions are on the table, but since we now know he’s open to being dealt, I wanted to take a minute to say goodbye to a guy who took a whole lot of grief around here even though SOME of it was a little much.

From my side of the laptop screen, I think Darnell Nurse has been a good Oiler for a long time. Full stop. That’s not me saying that he was anywhere close to perfect, and I’m not saying the contract wasn’t a problem. I mean, every single one of us has talked about his $9.25 million AAV a million times by now, and there’s no point pretending the cap hit didn’t change the way people watched him. Of course it did. Every mistake blew up on social media, there were plenty of rough patches, and when the Oilers were trying to win with Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl in the prime of their career, spending that much money on a d-men so inconsistent was a problem. That’s the cruel reality of the NHL, and the problem compounds when you’re talking about a team with Stanley Cup expectations and very little cap room to waste.

Even so, I don’t think Darnell Nurse’s time in Edmonton should be all about the contract that any of us would have sprinted to sign. This is a player who was drafted seventh overall in 2013, almost cracked the NHL lineup as a freshly drafted rookie, and stuck around long enough to see multiple versions of this franchise’s evolution. He saw the bad years, the rebuild of the rebuild, Connor McDavid taking over the city, multiple coaching changes, management changes, the playoff heartbreak, and the climb from league-wide punchline to legitimate contender. Through all of that, he played hard minutes, wore a letter, defended teammates, and was a guy you could depend on to be in the lineup every night. I’m not saying he was perfect, but the best ability is availability, and Darryl was always around.

In 798 games played as an Oiler, Nurse put up 88 goals and 236 assists for 324 points while finishing, at least for now, as a plus-66 player in Edmonton. As of this writing, Nurse ranks seventh in Oilers all-time games played, behind only Kevin Lowe, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Ryan Smyth, Leon Draisaitl, Mark Messier, and Glenn Anderson. During the 2025-26 season, Darryl played all 82 games, scored seven goals to go along with 17 assists, and while the minus-12 will be a number some folks will point to, the bigger picture is that nearly 800 games in one jersey doesn’t happen by accident. You don’t get numbers like that if you’re an awful hockey player, despite what many on Twitter will tell you.

And that’s why you won’t count me among the fans dancing on his grave on the way out of town. As much as I was frustrated by his play too, I’m not going to kick a guy while he’s down. Did Nurse play up to the full value of that contract? No, he did not. We all know that already. I also don’t think it makes a lot of sense to blame the player for taking the money the team put in front of him because I truly believe a lot of this noise around him wouldn’t exist if he made $3 million less. But that’s not what happened. Instead, he signed a massive ticket that was nearly impossible to live up to, and that’s exactly how things played out.

But here’s the thing when it comes to that deal… I would have signed that contract too. So would you. Even if you knew in your heart of hearts that you didn’t deserve it, if the Edmonton Oilers threw you eight years and $74 million after wrapping up a pair of bridge deals, you would have sprinted to the fax machine to sign that thing. Nurse got bridged, kept progressing, played every single night, and then cashed in on a contract year in that strange All-Canadian Division. That’s not a player doing something wrong. That’s a guy doing exactly what he should have done, and the Oilers handed him the bag.

If anything, the contract says more about how the Oilers managed the asset than it does about Nurse doing something he should be dragged for every single night. Ken Holland offered the deal because he put up a career-high in goals and points/game, and he signed it because he would have been a moron not to. That’s business, baby, whether we like it or not. The problem is that the contract became a microscope. A bad read or play wasn’t just a mistake anymore. A tough night wasn’t just a tough night. Every mistake turned into a social media dogpile of dumping on the guy, and while the frustration with the player, I also think how much money he made overshadowed literally everything about him.

That’s why I feel bittersweet about a move that probably needed to happen. While I absolutely agree that it was probably time for a fresh start, I also think it’s a little more complicated than just getting rid of an overpriced asset. The money is part of the story, but it’s not the whole story. For me, the bigger picture is that we’re saying goodbye to a player who gave the Oilers 12 years, a lot of hard minutes, and cared for the city as much as anyone could ask. Even though his play wasn’t always pretty, and it certainly wasn’t always worth the price tag, I still maintain that he was a good Oiler for more than a decade and that should count for something.

Maybe a trade happens in the coming days or weeks. Maybe this drags on well into the summer. Maybe the list of teams doesn’t line up with what the Oilers need, and everyone ends up awkwardly circling back like nothing happened. Moving a $9.25 million defenceman with full trade protection is not an easy to-do to check off the list, so there could be a long way to go before we know how this ends. But if this is goodbye, or even the start of goodbye, then I hope people can separate the player from the contract long enough to give Nurse some credit for what he did as an Oiler. He was around for a long time, played hard, cared about the community, and took nightly beatings from the fanbase and still wanted to be here. He was part of some of the best Oilers teams we’ve seen in decades, and even if the ending is getting messy, that shouldn’t erase the years that came before it.

So if this really is goodbye, I just want to take a minute to say thanks for everything, Darnell. Thanks for being in the lineup every night, always taking on big minutes, the fights, the playoff battles, the blocked shots, the fun nights, and the years spent wearing that logo through every variation you’ve seen of this ridiculous hockey team. All the best.

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