{"id":275331,"date":"2026-04-19T08:03:26","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T08:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/275331\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T08:03:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T08:03:26","slug":"murphy-stabilizing-oilers-defense-heading-into-western-1st-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/275331\/","title":{"rendered":"Murphy stabilizing Oilers defense heading into Western 1st Round"},"content":{"rendered":"

Acquired in a trade with Chicago on March 2 for a second-round pick in the 2028 NHL Draft, the 33-year-old has helped stabilize Edmonton’s defense. He’s fit in well playing alongside Darnell Nurse<\/a>, and the two have become the Oilers’ shutdown pair.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Prior to his arrival, the Oilers struggled at times in their own end.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We knew he could defend and I’m very impressed with his puck skills, he’s been able to make some really nice plays,” Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch said. “He’s not flashy but just making those five-and-10-foot passes and getting it into the forwards hands under pressure, he really excels at that. But I think with those two together, they really take a lot of pride in playing good defensive hockey and playing it hard. It looks like it’s been really good chemistry.”<\/p>\n

Nurse has benefitted from Murphy’s arrival perhaps more than anyone else. The 31-year-old needed a consistent partner that also played a hard-nosed game. Nurse was minus-11 in 62 games prior to Murphy’s arrival. He was minus-1 in the 20 games with Murphy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I think there’s a lot of the strengths to our game, we kind of play off each other and are playing hard,” Nurse said. “When you play with a partner that wants to go out there and play hard and defend well, it pulls on yourself as well. I think we’ve been kind of feeding off each other’s energy; our reads have been better and better. When you’re able to play with the same partner over and over again, practice after practice, you start to build on that.<\/p>\n

“I think we’ve done some really good things, and I don’t think we’re a finished product of what we can be as a pair and it’s on us to keep building on that as these playoffs roll on.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Murphy has four points (one goal, three assists) in 20 games with Edmonton, is averaging 20:27 minutes of ice time and is plus-1. He plays on the penalty kill, and along with Nurse, is usually on the ice in important defensive situations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Acquired in a trade with Chicago on March 2 for a second-round pick in the 2028 NHL Draft,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":275332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-275331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/275332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}