Connor McDavid says he's extremely disappointed to lose Darnell Nurse, but the Oilers captain isn't holding back praise for the new faces.
TSN caught up with McDavid Monday afternoon, and his answer had none of the usual coach-speak dodge.
McDavid put up 138 points this season, 48 goals and 90 assists across 82 games, with a plus-17 rating. That kind of workload makes losing a familiar face on the back end sting a little more.
Edmonton finished the year 41-30-11 for 93 points, good for 14th overall despite a plus-13 goal differential. Numbers that don't quite match the name-brand roster.
The Oilers won their last six of ten and closed the year on a one-game win streak, beating Vancouver 6-1 in their final tune-up. Momentum that got interrupted by an offseason shakeup nobody saw coming.
Edmonton also has a brand new voice behind the bench. Mike Babcock was hired as head coach on June 23, working alongside GM Stan Bowman to reshape a roster that just spent years chasing a Cup.
Losing Nurse isn't like swapping out a stick. It's more like trading away a pair of skates you've broken in for years, you know every flaw, but you also know exactly what you're getting on a Tuesday night in February.
Darnell Nurse now anchors the Sharks blue line at $9.25 million
Nurse didn't get traded into a rebuild bin. He landed in San Jose carrying a $9,250,000 cap hit, a real vote of confidence from a Sharks front office looking to add a physical, experienced presence.
Letting a homegrown defenseman like that walk is a defensible call given the depth Edmonton still has on the blue line with Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm. But it's still a bad look for a roster that hasn't closed the gap it needed to close.
McDavid praising the newcomers is the diplomatic part of the answer. The disappointment over Nurse is the part that actually tells you something.
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Edmonton heads into next season with a new coach, a reshuffled defense corps, and a captain who just told cameras, on the record, that this roster still has a hole in it. Whether Babcock and Bowman fill it before puck drop is the only question that matters now.
Was letting Darnell Nurse walk to the Sharks a mistake by the Oilers?
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