according to PuckPedia<\/a>.<\/p>\nIn a conference call with media members, Nurse confirmed the reports of a preferred trade list that included the Philadelphia Flyers, Pittsburgh Penguins and Boston Bruins. But as the Oilers were unable to make a deal happen, Nurse looked at other situations and saw the Sharks as one worth waiving his full NTC for.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was going through a process and there was a few options that I think at the beginning of my process just made the most sense in my mind,\u201d he said. \u201cFor me, I went through a deep dive of what I thought was best. Also talked to a lot of people that I respected in hockey, outside of hockey. \u2026 Every time I brought up San Jose, even when they weren\u2019t on my small list, everyone was like, \u2018You\u2019d be crazy not to go there. It\u2019s an amazing opportunity for you.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy that it shook out this way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over his 12 seasons with the Oilers, Nurse became a top-four fixture in their defense corps but also took a lot of criticism because he struggled to live up to the massive contract he signed at that time and Edmonton\u2019s failure to capture a Stanley Cup despite multiple playoff runs that included consecutive trips to the Cup Final.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo one expects more of themselves than me,\u201d he said. \u201cNo one is going to expect more of myself and the way I play than myself, if I\u2019m being quite honest. Joe from down the street could be mad because he can\u2019t drink his beer and watch the second round of the playoffs, but I live with each and every game, each and every moment throughout the summer and try to learn from it, grow from it. So for me, yeah, I think there were times that definitely, when you have a high cap hit, there was things that were definitely warranted, that my play definitely warranted them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say you can look and see there was probably a lot of things as well that probably weren\u2019t warranted, and for whatever reason I was the problem. That\u2019s sports though. That\u2019s how it works, I think. Especially in big markets and whatnot, you\u2019re never going to sell newspapers; you\u2019re never going to be able to get the attention without going negative. And I think someone\u2019s got to bear the brunt of that. For me, when you\u2019re making a lot of money and you\u2019re not performing \u2014 and like I said, there was a lot of moments that I felt like I needed to perform better and I didn\u2019t \u2014 but once you become that target, sometimes that target isn\u2019t moving off you.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s a fresh start.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his call, Nurse also reflected on the positive aspects of playing his career in a hockey-obsessed city. When he reached the Oilers as a full-time player in 2015-16, Nurse also had Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl at the beginning of their careers, but Edmonton was still on a run of 10 consecutive seasons without a playoff berth. It also was where his three sons were born.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can remember a lot of days when we were out of the playoffs by February,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cWe were working and trying to get ourselves to be a confident team and a playoff team and a competitor, and we worked our way into that mold and into that team. \u2026 Yeah, there\u2019s a lot of great memories in the sense of watching my family grow, watching the guys on the team grow. Watching the city grow as a hockey market when the playoffs came back. Watching that part grow, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike I said, there\u2019s a lot of great memories. I think it\u2019s easy to sit here in the present and think of all the negative things. But at the end of the day, there\u2019s a lot of positive to look back on and I\u2019m grateful for my time there.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Sharks were very active on the first day of free agency as they signed defenseman Jacob Trouba and winger Mason Marchment. They\u2019ve now added Nurse in a trade after previously acquiring Michael Kesselring to reshape their top two pairings on the blue line.<\/p>\n
Like Trouba and Marchment, Nurse expressed intrigue at the prospect of playing with burgeoning superstar Macklin Celebrini. The two were teammates with young Sharks defenseman Sam Dickinson at the world championships earlier this year, with Celebrini captaining Team Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I wanted to change and go somewhere else, I\u2019m going to go somewhere it\u2019s exciting to play and adds to the group,\u201d Nurse said. \u201cI think meeting those guys and hearing some stories about the locker room and the team and obviously playing against the team and seeing the promise that they have made, it all shook out in the end. An exciting place to go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Edmonton Oilers have traded defenseman Darnell Nurse to the San Jose Sharks in exchange for defensemen Shakir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[1792,385,835,99],"class_list":["post-738885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-edmonton-oilers","tag-nhl","tag-san-jose-sharks","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}