Dave Pagnotta<\/a> of The Fourth Period reported the Los Angeles Kings and Pittsburgh Penguins are two teams Nurse would be willing to be traded to.<\/p>\nThe 31-year-old Nurse was the No. 7 overall pick by the Oilers in the 2013 NHL draft, and he has played his entire 12-year NHL career in Edmonton.<\/p>\n
Nurse is seventh on the Oilers’ all-time regular-season games played list with 798, and he has recorded 88 goals and 236 goals for 324 points to go along with a plus-66 rating, 725 penalty minutes, 1,692 hits and 1,466 blocked shots.<\/p>\n
In 2021, Nurse signed an eight-year, $74 million contract extension with the Oilers. That came after he finished seventh in the Norris Trophy voting the previous season by virtue of a career-high 16 goals and plus-27 rating.<\/p>\n
Nurse’s production remained relatively steady the next two seasons, but the past three campaigns have largely been a struggle.<\/p>\n
He finished with 32 points and a plus-3 rating in 2023-24 and 33 points and a plus-11 rating in 2024-25.<\/p>\n
The Oilers reached the Stanley Cup Final each of those seasons, losing to to the Florida Panthers both times. Nurse was a minus-9 during their 2024 playoff run and rebounded a bit with a plus-2 in 2025.<\/p>\n
This season was one of the worst of Nurse’s career, as his 24 points were his fewest since the 2016-17 season when he had 11 in only 44 games.<\/p>\n
His minus-12 rating was also his worst since a minus-13 back in 2015-16.<\/p>\n
In Edmonton’s six-game exit in the first round of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Anaheim Ducks, Nurse did not record a single point.<\/p>\n
Nurse is battle-tested with 100 career playoff games, and durable having missed only seven games over the past four seasons, but his contract would be a tough pill to swallow for interested teams.<\/p>\n
With a yearly salary cap hit of $9.25 million through the 2029-30 season, the Oilers would likely have to retain a portion of his salary in order to move him.<\/p>\n
Doing so would give Edmonton some flexibility to make additions elsewhere, though, and the organization may be desperate to do so.<\/p>\n
The Oilers already fired head coach Kris Knoblauch following their first-round playoff loss, and it was likely done because time is of the essence.<\/p>\n
Superstar forward Connor McDavid is signed for only two more seasons, and if the Oilers want to get him locked into a long-term extension, another early playoff exit won’t help.<\/p>\n
The Oilers have a spectacular core with McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Evan Bouchard leading the way, but the supporting cast needs to improve, and trading Nurse could help make that happen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse has reportedly requested a trade from the only NHL team he has ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":730431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-730430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=730430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/730430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/730431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=730430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=730430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=730430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}