Darnell Nurse isn\u2019t hiding from his numbers, nor the criticism that comes with them.<\/p>\n
He sees his stats, as well as the position the Edmonton Oilers<\/a> are in (sitting in the second wild-card spot behind teams with games in hand) and understands the correlation.<\/p>\n They need to be better. He needs to be better.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 61 games, I\u2019m minus-12 and have 20 points, I\u2019m not happy about that at all,\u201d he said after the Oilers optional morning skate in advance of their game with Ottawa Tuesday night.<\/p>\n \u201cWith that said, if we\u2019re going to reach the goal that we want to reach, I have to step up for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Nurse has been on the wrong end of some mistakes and missed coverage around his own net, an area that just about everyone on the team is guilty of. He\u2019ll accept his share of the heat because, as a leader on the team and a player expected to be a strong, steady influence in his own end, the turnaround starts with him.<\/p>\n \u201cThe accountability, who I owe that to, are the guys in the room,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s it. No one else. Showing up each and every day and giving everything I have for each guy in there and enjoying it.\u201d<\/p>\n Edmonton\u2019s team defence has been the gaping hole in their boat all season; they know that, and have been saying all the right things about shoring that up. It still hasn\u2019t happened yet, with time running out on the season, but Nurse believes it\u2019s in there somewhere.<\/p>\n \u201cWe can be much better in that department,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019ve shown in stretches and areas throughout the season that when we check, we play really good hockey.<\/p>\n \u201cOur group has it. Individually, we all feel we have it. For me, it\u2019s going out there and being hard to play against. Having fun on that side of the ice is going to help our group. We\u2019re excited about the last 21 games; there is a lot of hockey to be played.\u201d<\/p>\n Nurse is the first to admit the last couple of weeks haven\u2019t been much fun \u2014 the long grind, losing games and a general unrest in the community can be taxing \u2014 but he\u2019s been around long enough to know that they don\u2019t hand out report cards on the season until the season is over.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fun to win, so when you\u2019re aren\u2019t winning the amount that we have in the past, the joy probably isn\u2019t there as much. With that said, that (fun) is earned. The harder you work, there is a lot of happiness in the struggle and the grind of it.<\/p>\n \u201cI think if we can up that intensity and embrace that a little more, especially down these last 21 games, we\u2019re going to enjoy the end of this.\u201d<\/p>\n E-mail:\u00a0rtychkowski@postmedia.com<\/a><\/p>\n Related<\/p>\n Bookmark our website and support our journalism: Don\u2019t miss the news you need to know \u2014 add EdmontonJournal.com<\/a> and EdmontonSun.com<\/a> to your bookmarks and sign up for our newsletters here.<\/a><\/p>\n You can also support our journalism by becoming a digital subscriber. Subscribers gain unlimited access to The Edmonton Journal, Edmonton Sun, National Post and 13 other Canadian news sites. Support us by subscribing today: The Edmonton Journal<\/a> | The Edmonton Sun.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Darnell Nurse isn\u2019t hiding from his numbers, nor the criticism that comes with them. He sees his stats,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194294],"tags":[49,48,29972,23752,453,751,20739,129393],"class_list":["post-512548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-edmonton","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-darnell-nurse","tag-edmonton","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-new-york-rangers","tag-ottawa","tag-will-cuylle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512548","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=512548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}