On Saturday, the Oilers announced that Oscar Klefbom will be out for the next 6-8 weeks after undergoing surgery on his broken fingers, which were the result of being hit with an errant slap shot in Denver last week. Klefbom has been having a career-best year so far. He has 15 points in 31 games (40 point pace), and he has been playing 25:25 per night, which is good for 8th most in the league. Klefbom’s injury is a big blow to the Oilers defence.
With injury comes opportunity. In this case, Darnell Nurse is the recipient of the opportunity to fill in on the top pairing. That idea in itself isn’t new for Nurse, as he routinely played with Adam Larsson on the top pairing in Klefbom’s absence last season. Nurse has already been getting a lot of even strength minutes (19:33/game compared to Klefbom’s 19:44) and penalty killing minutes (2:12/game) this season, but the real opportunity for Nurse is to see time on the 1st powerplay unit. This will be the first stretch where Nurse will have contributed in every aspect of the game. His coach believes that this is a positive thing for Nurse. Hitchcock said that Nurse plays better the more he’s on the ice, similar to Alex Pietrangelo in St. Louis.
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In the short term, I have no doubt that Nurse will fill in capably on the top pairing. In the big picture, Nurse has now played in 230 NHL games. He will have played in 279 games by the end of this season if he remains healthy. The old saying goes that you know what you have in an NHL defenceman once he has played 300 games. The next 6-8 weeks will be quite telling about what we have in Darnell Nurse. We are about to find out if he can be a top pairing defenceman, or if he is better suited as a strong 2nd pairing defenceman going forward.
What about the long term? Click the link and find out what Ryan (@EdmOilDrops) thinks about Nurse’s long-term future!
