{"id":508777,"date":"2026-03-02T04:39:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T04:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/508777\/"},"modified":"2026-03-02T04:39:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-02T04:39:17","slug":"oilers-not-firing-on-all-cylinders-as-trade-deadline-approaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/508777\/","title":{"rendered":"Oilers not firing on all cylinders as trade deadline approaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Let\u2019s think of an NHL roster like a car. A confluence of interconnected parts that come together to produce a single entity \u2014\u00a0a game\u00a0\u2014 which is the output of all the working parts doing their own specific job.<\/p>\n

Contracts (and no-move clauses) marry teams to certain parts that cannot simply be changed out on a whim.\u00a0Andrew Mangiapane<\/a>, waived by the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> on Sunday, was not one such part.<\/p>\n

Otherwise, they are forced to depend on those parts, whether they\u2019re working well or not. If those parts function at less than their required level, the car \u2014\u00a0the team \u2014 cannot purr along at its highest level.<\/p>\n

The 11-year veteran is a huge part of Edmonton\u2019s defensive game on the ice, and their dressing room culture off of it. He\u2019s been there since the start, before Connor McDavid<\/a> and Leon Draisaitl, and he has the battle scars to prove it.<\/p>\n

Nurse wears an \u2018A\u2019 as an alternate captain, and for better or worse, has been given a large percentage of the salary pie ($9.25 million per season).<\/p>\n

Nurse is trusted with nearly 21 minutes per game of ice time \u2014\u00a0fourth on the Oilers. Edmonton\u2019s defensive game, like it or not, turns around Nurse\u2019s axis to some degree.<\/p>\n

If Nurse\u2019s game becomes leaky or untrustworthy, which it has been for much of the season, Edmonton\u2019s overall game becomes untrustworthy for the one-third of the game that he plays. As a leader, if he\u2019s not performing, it becomes impossible for him to call on others to block more shots, or make better plays.<\/p>\n

You might say, \u201cThen don\u2019t play Nurse so much!\u201d Fine.<\/p>\n

But what does head coach Kris Knoblauch do with those minutes then?<\/p>\n

Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm, the first pairing, can\u2019t take on more ice time. Their plate is full.<\/p>\n

And the third-pairing guys \u2014\u00a0Ty Emberson and Spencer Stastney \u2014\u00a0are third-pairing guys for a reason. If they could handle 20-plus minutes a night, they\u2019d be second-pairing guys, right?<\/p>\n

Now, back to the car analogy. You can trick our car out at the deadline with an extra, optional part here and there. But if the core pieces \u2014 Nurse, the penalty kill, the depth scorers, an overall game that respects the defensive side of the sport \u2014 don\u2019t effectively cover off their responsibilities, it doesn\u2019t matter who or what you add.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just Nurse.<\/p>\n

The other core pieces on this roster are playing an unbalanced game as well. Lots of offence is great, but that\u2019s only one facet of the game \u2014 a facet that becomes secondary to solid defensive play as the games get more important.<\/p>\n

\"3232 Thoughts: The Podcast<\/p>\n

Hockey fans already know the name, but this is not the blog. From Sportsnet, 32 Thoughts: The Podcast with NHL Insider Elliotte Friedman and Kyle Bukauskas is a weekly deep dive into the biggest news and interviews from the hockey world.<\/p>\n

Latest episode<\/a><\/p>\n

Since Christmas, at five-on-five, Edmonton\u2019s top line of McDavid between Zach Hyman and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has been on the ice for one more goal for than against. The trio has produced 29 goals and 73 points, yet it has a 5v5 goals share of barely over 50 per cent.<\/p>\n

Draisaitl is minus-2, with a goals-for share of 47 per cent. He has 11-19-30 since Christmas.<\/p>\n

So the team\u2019s top producers function offensively extremely well. But they give up as much as they get \u2014\u00a0sometimes more.<\/p>\n

The top pairing of Ekholm and Bouchard is plus-17 since Christmas. But the second pairing is minus-13, with Nurse holding a 39 per cent goals-for differential, worst among Edmonton\u2019s top six forwards and top four defencemen.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s another telling stat: in their past 10 games, the Oilers have scored the most goals in the NHL (44) and allowed the most (46). Their record in that time is 4-6.<\/p>\n

The Buffalo Sabres have played 11 games in that time span, going 8-2-1. They\u2019ve scored one less goal (43) but allowed 18 fewer (28).<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s awesome that McDavid is heading towards another Art Ross, and that Bouchard has crawled into the NHL\u2019s top 10 with 69 points and might be a Norris candidate. But here\u2019s the problem.<\/p>\n

The team is not winning games \u2014\u00a0they have 22 regulation wins in 61 starts \u2014\u00a0and that\u2019s the only thing that matters.<\/p>\n

McDavid has said it 100 times: they\u2019ve had plenty of individual awards in this dressing room. There\u2019s only one trophy that really matters.<\/p>\n

With McDavid under contract for only three more playoff runs, and with the spectre that it could only be two if he doesn\u2019t re-sign, general manager Stan Bowman has no choice but to be all in at the trade deadline.<\/p>\n

Even if it is possible that, like the Florida Panthers, the sheer number of games this Oilers roster has played over the past three seasons \u2014\u00a0coupled with the frenetic pace of this compacted Olympic year \u2014\u00a0has left the Oilers too mentally fatigued to locate a game worthy of a third straight Stanley Cup Final.<\/p>\n

Bowman\u2019s primary deadline goal is to find a partner to play with Nurse, like a gear head adding horse power to an already powerful muscle car. That could be the antidote for Nurse\u2019s game, which was at a seasonal low in Game 61 at San Jose on Saturday.<\/p>\n

But Bowman can add all he wants.<\/p>\n

If Nurse doesn\u2019t find his game, if McDavid turns pucks over in a 4-4 game on the road, if the shot blockers don\u2019t start selling out and blocking some shots, if goalie Tristan Jarry doesn\u2019t perform to the level expected of him\u2026<\/p>\n

The new part will be just that.<\/p>\n

A part. Of a team that doesn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON \u2014\u00a0Let\u2019s think of an NHL roster like a car. A confluence of interconnected parts that come together…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":508778,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,23752],"class_list":["post-508777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=508777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/508777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/508778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=508777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=508777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=508777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}