Whether it’s depth scoring, special teams, goaltending, or so on, the Edmonton Oilers’ roster has always seemed to possess some crucial area of concern in recent history. Perhaps the one issue that has been most persistent throughout the past few years is their second defensive pairing.

On the one hand, the Oilers held the best defensive pairing in the NHL last season. In 2023-24, the duo of Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard ranked first among all defensive pairs in total goal and expected goal differential at 5-on-5. As I wrote during the 2024 playoffs, their performance was absolutely critical to Edmonton’s deep postseason run.

But on the other hand, their other top-four pairing, anchored by Darnell Nurse, has been far worse.

From 2022-23 through 2023-24, Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci were primarily Edmonton’s second-pair. In the regular-season, they narrowly managed to scrape a positive 5-on-5 goal differential in that span, playing on a team that was a huge net positive, while they also possessed some of the league’s worst defensive results against elite competition. The postseason results are even worse; in the past two playoffs, the Oilers have been out-scored 24 to 36 at 5v5 with Nurse on-ice. Meanwhile, with Nurse on the bench, the Oilers are up 53 to 42.

Put differently, the Oilers have improved by a 23-goal swing in 36 games without Nurse at 5v5 in the playoffs. With Nurse’s $9.25M cap-hit in mind, there’s a plausible argument that the performance of the second-pair has single-handedly cost the Oilers a Stanley Cup.

Of course, it’s not all on Nurse; it is evident at this point that Cody Ceci is not a top-four defenceman, and Nurse required a better defensive partner.

In general, it has been quite some time since the Oilers possessed two strong top-four defensive pairs. They came close in 2019-20, when they ran top-four pairings of Oscar Klefbom – Adam Larsson and Darnell Nurse – Ethan Bear, but Klefbom’s retirement (due to shoulder injuries), Larsson’s departure to Seattle, and the Bear for Foegele trade caused them to completely restructure their defensive core. The emergence of Evan Bouchard and the Mattias Ekholm trade have obviously been huge boosts, but the team has searched for a capable second-pairing right-defender ever since.

Heading into 2024-25, the Oilers didn’t exactly make any significant improvement to the second-pair over the summer. They did trade Ceci to the San Jose Sharks for defenceman Ty Emberson, but Emberson is not exactly a top-four defender.

However, early results this season suggest that the answer to Edmonton’s second-pair might have been in their own locker room all this time.

For the past few weeks, Edmonton has not had a specific second-pairing set in stone. Instead, head coach Kris Knoblauch and defence coach Paul Coffey have rotated the players on the second and third pairings. Specifically, they have often deployed a pair of Darnell Nurse and Brett Kulak.

Kulak was initially dealt to the Oilers at the 2022 Trade Deadline from the Montreal Canadiens, and for the vast majority of his tenure in Edmonton, he has played as Edmonton’s third-pairing left-defenceman. As a left-shot defenceman, LD is his natural position. However, his role seems to have recently changed.

This change in deployment began in a victory against the Pittsburgh Penguins on October 25. Up until that point, Nurse had heavily struggled, operating at a 44 percent expected goal differential while being out-scored 3 to 6 at 5v5. The Oilers attempted to pair him with each of Troy Stecher, Ty Emberson, and Travis Dermott, but Nurse failed to post adequate results with all three of them, particularly playing quite poorly next to Dermott.

According to pregame warmups, Nurse was yet again paired next to Troy Stecher against Pittsburgh. But, Knoblauch and Coffey frequently deployed Kulak next to Nurse in that game. Safe to say, it worked out quite well, as Edmonton decisively won the game 4-0, and scoring chances were 7 to 0 in favour of Edmonton with Nurse and Kulak on-ice at 5v5.

Ever since that night, this has been a recurring pattern.

Nurse would often start games with Stecher, while Kulak would start next to Ty Emberson, but as those games went on, Kulak and Nurse would receive numerous shifts next to one another. There was no de facto LD or RD on that pair; rather, both Nurse and Kulak would interchange positions from shift to shift.

Now, Nurse has played more total minutes with Stecher compared to Nurse, but Nurse and Kulak have been deployed in more important situations.

For instance, Nurse – Kulak has averaged roughly 23 defensive zone starts per hour, compared to about 14 for Nurse – Stecher. With Ekholm and Bouchard primarily playing with Connor McDavid’s line, the Nurse pair often plays more with Leon Draisaitl, and in this case, Nurse – Kulak average more minutes with Draisaitl than Nurse – Stecher.

So far? The results of this new deployment strategy have been fantastic.

With a 66 percent expected goal share, alongside a 3 to 1 goal differential, Nurse and Kulak have thoroughly outplayed the opposition when on-ice together. They could actually have something here.

It has been frequently reported that Edmonton’s management is expected to pursue a top-four defenceman who can play the right side at the 2025 Trade Deadline. But, if Nurse and Kulak’s success together is a real thing, it’s a significant game-changer. There would be substantially less pressure for the Oilers to spend major assets on a RHD, and, depending on who’s available, it may open up the option of pursuing a left-defenceman for the third pair instead, or even a goaltending upgrade.

So, it begs the question; will Nurse and Kulak’s success sustain?

Now, it obviously must be mentioned that Nurse and Kulak have only played about 75 minutes together this season, which is far from a terrific sample size. For now, we must be cautious about making definitive conclusions.

But, there are other indicators that suggest that these results aren’t simply a mirage.

For one, the 2024 playoffs, where Nurse had played with four different defensive partners throughout that run; Cody Ceci, Vincent Desharnais, Philip Broberg, and Brett Kulak. Here are their results with Nurse, side by side:

As mentioned earlier, Nurse – Ceci was a flat-out disaster in the postseason. Nurse – Desharnais was subpar, and although Nurse – Broberg had a positive goal differential, their awful underlying scoring chance numbers indicate it was highly sustainable.

Out of the four pairings here, the only one to produce positive shot and chance metrics was the Nurse and Kulak pair.

Following an awful performance by Nurse in Game 3 of the Western Conference Finals against the Dallas Stars, Kulak was initially deployed as Nurse’s defensive partner in Game 4. The team would go on to win Games 4, 5 and 6 of the WCF with Nurse – Kulak as the second-pairing out-shooting and out-chancing the Stars when on-ice.

However, despite their success, the Oilers separated the pairing in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Panthers, going back to Nurse – Ceci in Game 1. While an official reason was never stated, Rob Brown of 630 CHED reported that Kulak may have not been comfortable playing his off-side.

Perhaps it was continued struggles of the Nurse pairing or the pressure of Edmonton’s underwhelming early-season record, but for whatever reason, it seems there has been a major change in Kulak and/or the coaching staff’s mindset this season. Although the playoff sample isn’t large either, it’s a potential indicator that Nurse – Kulak’s current results aren’t simply a fluke.

“You’ve got two veteran defencemen, Nurse and Kulak, who are on different pairs but we feel like we can get more out of them and they can bring more and they have,” said Kris Knoblauch in response to a question from Daily Hive regarding Kulak’s deployment next to Nurse.

“They’re both good defencemen, so it doesn’t matter if sometimes Kulak is on the right or sometimes Nurse is on the right. They’re just playing hockey, they can both handle it. We’ve been very happy with those two.”

Another reason that could suggest these results will sustain is Kulak’s specific skill set.

To determine whether two defenceman could stylistically fit together on a defensive pair, I often like to use microstats, which are essentially statistics relating to specific individual actions, such as zone entries, zone exits, and so on. Corey Sznajder has operated a microstat tracking project for about a decade now (highly recommend checking out his work), and using his data, here is a brief microstat profile for Nurse:

Over the past two years, I have written a lot about finding a suitable defensive partner for Nurse. For this reason, I won’t dive too deep into this yet again, but the microstat profile above nicely outlines Nurse’s major strengths and weaknesses at 5v5 (for a more detailed analysis of Nurse’s game, you can check out this article). In a nutshell, Nurse excels at carrying the puck into the offensive zone, but zone entry defence and controlled zone exits are critical flaws in his game. In practice, a perfect partner for Nurse should excel at these areas where Nurse struggles.

Comparatively, here’s a profile of Brett Kulak’s microstats:

In regards to zone entry defence, this may be Brett Kulak’s most valuable trait.

Simply put, Kulak is an excellent rush defender, and has been ever since his time in Montreal. Kulak consistently uses his superb skating and defensive smarts to stand up the blueline, constantly applying pressure to oncoming forwards and limiting space for them to make a play, often forcing a dump-in or turnover as a result. This is the area where the Nurse pairing has most significantly improved.

Additionally, Nurse is not great at puck retrievals, but it’s not as huge of concern, and although Kulak’s retrieval volume isn’t particularly high, his high retrieval success rate should also improve that specific area of the second-pair.

On the other hand, it’s the zone exits that are my biggest question mark.

One study from a few years back discovered that NHL defencemen were considerably less effective at exiting the defensive zone when playing on their off-side. Now, Kulak ranks comfortably above-average at zone exits, and as mentioned before, there is no clearcut right-defenceman on the Nurse and Kulak pair, as both have interchanged playing as the RD on the pair; still, it’s worth noting that Kulak has primarily played at 3LD over the past few seasons.

It is a big jump from making zone exits as a third-pairing defenceman against weaker competition, compared to exiting the zone against top-four competition with a significant chunk of your shifts on your off-side. Thus far, Kulak has been fine at exiting the zone, but again, these results are quite early.

So with everything in mind, I believe Nurse and Kulak should theoretically work fine defensively. Moving forward, the most important thing I would keep an eye on is if the pair can effectively move the puck out of their own end, because if they can, this pairing’s success will truly be legitimate. We’ll get a much better idea of this down the stretch as the sample increases and as the Oilers play more difficult opponents.

All things considered, I must admit how refreshing it is to feel optimistic about Edmonton’s second defensive pair. Long-time readers of my articles will know that I have often been quite critical towards Nurse throughout the years. But now, the Oilers are finally on the verge of running a truly balanced top-four defence.

Have Kris Knoblauch and Paul Coffey finally found the answer to the Darnell Nurse pair? Fortunately, multiple pieces of evidence are in their favour. But ultimately, only time will tell.

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