Opportunity there and Nurse seized it
Averaging 21 minutes a game with the Oilers
Circumstances, and the man himself, have reconfigured the Edmonton Oilers’ blueprint for Darnell Nurse.
Before the NHL season opened, various executives of the NHL team told just about anyone else who cared, that they would prefer to park the 20-year-old defence- man and a couple of other highend prospects with their American Hockey League team in Bakersfield, Calif., for most, if not all, of the year.
The organizational attitude had become such after all those high draft choices.
They’d had more than their share the past half-decade, and many had been fast-tracked and forced to learn the game too quickly at the NHL level.
But after only six games with the AHL Condors, Nurse was in the big leagues, and as the Oilers enjoy an extended (10day) all-star break, the 20-yearold from Hamilton has not returned to California other than to play against the Sharks, Kings and Ducks. He’s earned more ice time in his 41 games than all but three other Oilers, less than 50 seconds per game behind team leader Oskar Klefbom.
“Everyone was kind of expecting it,” Nurse says of the pre-season potential for an extended stay in Bakersfield this year. “Then they had the injury bug up here (in Edmonton). It happened pretty f ast. I got the opportunity and have tried to make the most of it.”
Nurse would be the last to say he hasn’t gone through some adjustment struggles to the pace of the NHL, but it was he who remained in the lineup when fellow young rearguard Griffin Reinhart was sent down to Bakersfield. And veteran defencemen Andrew Ference and Nikita Nikitin were dispatched to the press box while Nurse has been playing 21 minutes per game.
“It’s been pretty good,” Nurse told The Spectator. “But it’s been a lot of learning for me. I still have a long way to go to be the player I want to be. The big part of that is being hard to play against. I don’t think there’s been anything that’s surprised me as more difficult than I expected. The biggest thing is the speed the entire league plays at.”
He has a pair of goals and six assists, but carries a minus-9, although that’s not out of place on the Oilers blue-line.
Head coach Todd McLellan recently said that he’d prefer to have his young defencemen undergo seasoning in the American Hockey League, a process which was critical to Klefbom’s strong emergence this season. That could still happen with Nurse, but it’s becoming less likely, especially as the injury parade has not petered out. Three Oilers were sent to the AHL for the all-star break, but Nurse wasn’t one of them.
Nurse can play either side of the ice but this year he’s been at left defence all season with a veteran on the right, first Andrej Sekera and recently, Justin Schultz.
The Oilers have been disappointing in recent years, including this one when they’re having trouble winning on the road, despite landing spectacularly-credentialed draftees Taylor Hall, Nail Yakupov, Ryan NugentHopkins and Connor McDavid.
The latter two are injured at the moment. They mounted a six-game winning streak to open December but hit the all-star break with three straight losses.
But rising on the horizon is the new downtown rink which will replace Rexall Place, which has been around since pre-Gretzky days. Its opening next year, the Oilers hope, will coincide with the collective gelling of the team’s talented young core.
“It’s definitely a marketer’s dream,” Nurse says. “With the whole reconstruction of downtown Edmonton it will bring a big boost to not only the players but the whole city.”
Nurse will be back in Hamilton Friday for
fellow local NHLer Zac Rinaldo’s Fight for A Cause event at Mohawk 4 Ice Centre, presented by SportsLab, a Sports Centre of Excellence.
The program includes an afternoon clinic and an evening dinner and charity auction for McMaster Children’s Hospital.
“Zac reached out a month ago for the fundraiser,” Nurse says.
“The players from Hamilton are always glad to give back to the community, and to give back to the hospital.
“So obviously I said yes.”