Tom Gazzola joined TFP Hotstove on Sirius XM NHL Network Radio with Dennis Bernstein, Dave Pagnotta, and Ryan Paton on Saturday. There he was asked about the marriage between defenseman Darnell Nurse and the Edmonton Oilers coming to an end.
Writing for NHLRumors.com
Darnell Nurse Requests Trade, Cale Makar Extension, Senators Interest in Mason McTavish
Ryan Paton: Darnell Nurse, Tom Gazzola, $9.25 million AAV DEAD 2030 contract expires 2030. He wants out. Why did it take so long? That’s my question. Because I think this marriage has been falling apart for a long time.
Tom Gazzola: “Yeah, that’s a fair statement. Good assessment, Ryan. I mean, Darnell Nurse I remember in his first few years in the league, before he got a bridge once or twice, and finally got this big contract. Happy-go-lucky, easy to talk to. He’ll shoot the wind with you.
And then I think that when that deal was signed, and things didn’t go well the first few years, and the spotlight was on him, the focus was on him, the fans came to him because that’s a lot of money, especially in a market like this. People pay attention to everything. I think that started to put a strain on him, and you could see his behavior change in and out of the locker room and in the rink, and I feel like it almost reached a breaking point.
Maybe it happened a year ago, but you know you’ve used a lot of (Connor) McDavid and (Leon) Draisaitl and (Ryan) Nugent-Hopkins. Those guys wanted to win, and they wanted to win together. And I think that after this past year, maybe there’s a realization that it might not happen, and that’s enough. And he said, “You know what, I’ll be fine by continuing.”
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So it’s not good. I don’t like to see some of the vitriol spewed at him, and fans can be harsh on marquee players, and there’s a good defender there, and he’s a 9.25 million defender, AAV, maybe not, but he’s serviceable when he’s driven, he’s efficient, he’s skilled, he runs well.
He’s in the prime of his career, and we’ll see if Stan Bowman and Jeff Jackson can find him the right home and get him a decent return and try to save cap space, because, as has been pointed out many times in the last few weeks, they had the potential to have a lot of cap space going into this season and decided to make a move that burned it unnecessarily.”
NHLRumors.com Note: Now that Darnell Nurse has gone to the team this offseason asking for a trade it will be interesting to see where he is traded. Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes he wants to go East and doesn’t want to go to Toronto. The Pittsburgh Penguins and Edmonton Oilers are talking about Nurse. Is there any trade-off between those two groups at work? But there is a chance that Darnell Nurse could find a new home and be like K’Andre Miller and enter a completely new program. But the time was right for these two sides to part ways.
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