It’s no secret that the Philadelphia Flyers are going to explore as many avenues as possible this offseason to try and upgrade their roster. Whether that is aiming as high as they can to nab a first-line center to solidify this forward group for the next few years as they push into being regular playoff contenders; or maybe just getting a solid defenseman who could be on the younger side, so that they can feel better about trading away Rasmus Ristolainen — which would also do the same playoff contender push.
If general manager Danny Briere were to really target the blue line and look for an improvement on there — and if it is after they make a hypothetical Ristolainen trade so they are in the need for some length and physicality — then he might just be pondering around the available names and could land on one that would not work out well.
That run-on sentence is leading to one thing, basically: The Flyers potentially looking into trading for Darnell Nurse from the Edmonton Oilers.
And boy, would it be a mistake.
Flyers would deeply regret trading for Darnell Nurse
Reports have come out that the Oilers are going to be speaking with Nurse in the coming days about his future with the team and how they might need to move on from him this summer. The 31-year-old defenseman has been with Edmonton since he was drafted seventh overall by them in 2013 and has played almost 800 games for the club, but now the time has finally come that general manager Stan Bowman is going to be sending him elsewhere.
There has not been a connection made to the Flyers and Nurse yet, but the writing is essentially on the wall. As pointed out earlier, he is basically a left-handed version of Ristolainen. In that he doesn’t give you a whole lot of offense — his career high is 43 points during the 2022-23 season — but is seen as a 6-foot-4 force on the back end that can be a punishing defender in the right circumstance.
Edmonton is seen as not a very good environment for a defender, since they have been absolutely horrible at trying to prevent scoring chances against for the past couple of seasons. Now, in a chicken-or-the-egg scenario — is that poor defense affecting Nurse’s overall impact or are the Oilers poor defensively because Nurse is averaging over 20 minutes a game?
The numbers can vary but Nurse is seen as a generally poor player in his own zone and while he does have some solid value to 5-on-5 offensive impact, it gets negated by some atrocious play on special teams. As we can all see here in this lovely visual from friend of the blog Micah Blake McCurdy at HockeyViz.com:
He’s not a nightmare on the ice (other than on the penalty kill) but there is no real beneficial value from adding Nurse to your team.
While Ristolainen’s own isolated impact chart (pay Micah if you want to see that one) does not make him look like an All-Star or anything, his -12% expected goal impact at 5-on-5 defense makes him instantly a better overall defenseman compared to whatever Nurse brings as his overall package.
And this is all in a vacuum, too. Nurse as the player, concentrated down to what he brings on the ice as a potential top-four defenseman while playing behind some of the greatest forwards we’ve seen in this millennium, is not really some prime addition that would take this Flyers team over the top on the back end. He might be able to improve — like we have seen with Ristolainen in the years since he was acquired by Philadelphia — but now is not really the time to undergo some reclamation project to eventually re-coup some value later on. For Briere and the Flyers right now, it’s all about strengthening this young core of players and making sure that they have the right pieces in place to try and try and try again to go deep into the playoffs.
Oh, and we haven’t even got to the finances of it all.
Adding Nurse doesn’t even make sense financially
Since with every trade in the NHL we have to think about the ramifications on the salary cap, we have to do it with this hypothetical acquisition as well. And it’s a doozy.
Darnell Nurse has four years remaining on a contract that carries a $9.25-million AAV. That is obviously more than anyone currently makes on the Philadelphia Flyers, and considering that he is seen as not even good enough to earn that contract on the Edmonton Oilers — with their clock ticking and soon enough Connor McDavid is going to be looking elsewhere as his own free agency is coming in 2028 — they need all the good players they can get (and keep).
Even in this hypothetical world that the Flyers trade away Ristolainen and his $5.1-million AAV, and the Oilers retain a couple million bucks to bring his cap hit to something like $7.25 million, that is still an astronomical price to pay for a defender who is approaching his mid-30s and clearly has not impacted the game all that well in his recent years.
If the Flyers were to acquire Nurse, it would be committing the next couple years to this current blue line. It would be putting a big giant red rubber stamp on this group of defenseman and Briere saying “Yup, these are the guys I want to continue pushing for the playoffs with”. And is a top four of Travis Sanheim, Cam York, Jamie Drysdale, and Darnell Nurse, going to look even all that different than it is now? No, and it could be so much worse.
Even if Oliver Bonk excels and finds himself in that top four by the end of next season, and David Jiricek is suddenly a dynamic offensive creator whose impact in the other team’s zone outweighs his mistakes in the Flyers’ zone; that blue line is still something that can hold the team back from truly reaching their ceiling. And with players like Travis Konecny still being effective, and Trevor Zegras and Tyson Foerster and Owen Tippett all either in their prime or approaching it, the Flyers can’t waste these upcoming years because they decided to try and get some dude who has played with McDavid for the last decade.
Again, there have been no reports that have connected the Flyers to Nurse. But, we would bet a whole lot that his name has been brought up in management meetings as a potential option if they were to get a haul for Ristolainen and do not trust that any of the young players can be an adequate replacement next season.
It just seems like something that could happen, but really should not. Instead of trying to get just any tall, physical defenseman, the Flyers need to get the right tall, physical defenseman that can also do a whole lot else.
