In a bit of work that seemed to develop out of thin air, General Manager Mike Grier traded restricted free agent Shakir Mukhamadullin and 2025 draft pick (124th overall) Zachary Sharp to the Edmonton Oilers for defenseman Darnell Nurse. The Sharks took on the entire cap hit of Nurse’s contract, which lasts through the 2029-30 season.
How does Nurse’s contract break down?
Nurse’s contract comes with a $9.25 million AAV, but the actual cost of the deal is a bit less for the Sharks. That’s because Edmonton put the bulk of the cost in the front-end of this contract. The trouble for San Jose will be moving away from this deal if it needs to. Here’s how things break down according to PuckPedia.
| 2026-27 | 2027-28 | 2028-29 | 2029-30 | |
| Base Salary | $2.00 M | $1.20 M | $1.20 M | $1.20 M |
| Signing Bonus | $6.00 M | $6.00 M | $6.00 M | $6.00 M |
| Total Salary | $8.00 M | $7.20 M | $7.20 M | $7.20 M |
| Clauses | NMC | 10 Team No Trade List | 10 Team No Trade List | 10 Team No Trade List |
While the final salary has no impact on the cap, it certainly makes management happier. It also makes other teams happier if they’re looking to acquire a player’s contract down the road. If the Sharks were looking to move Nurse’s contract in the future, a $7.2 million or even better, a $1.2 million payout (after the bonuses) is much easier for a team to agree to.
More than that, after this upcoming season, the Sharks will have more flexibility than Edmonton had when it comes to trying to trade Nurse’s contract. That’s when his no-trade clause turns into a modified no-trade clause, and he has to submit a ten team list at the start of every season.
Nurse controversy and potential redemption
Of course, Sharks fans have reason to be nervous. The 31-year-old defenseman has often been the scapegoat of Edmonton fans, who have criticized him for much of the team’s playoff troubles. While Nurse hasn’t been the best in big game situations, he doesn’t believe he should shoulder all of the blame.
Perhaps because of his contract, it seemed like Darnell Nurse bore the brunt of a lot of fan (and media) criticism in Edmonton. It was warranted at times, no doubt, but I asked him how he felt about that.
— Curtis Pashelka (@CurtisPashelka) July 1, 2026
"No one expects more of myself and the way I play than myself. If I'm…
“No one expects more of myself and the way I play than myself,” Nurse told the media earlier today. “If I’m being quite honest, Joe from down the street could be mad because he can’t drink his beer and watch the second round of playoffs, but I live with each and every game and each and every moment throughout the summer, and try to learn from it, grow from it.
“So I think there were times that definitely when you have a high cap hit, there’s things that were definitely warranted … and there was probably a lot of things as well that really weren’t warranted, and for whatever reason that was, I was the problem, so that’s that’s how it works,” he said.
Nurse will look to redeem himself here in San Jose. Hockey analysts believe there’s still a good player there, even if he can’t live up to that $9.25 million AAV contract he carries. The Athletic’s Dom Luszczyszyn said on Twitter that he believes Nurse is still a legit top-four defenseman.
Darnell Nurse is overpaid, but he's a legit top-four defenseman — something the Sharks desperately need. Don't mind the add for them while the Oilers get some much-needed cap relief. pic.twitter.com/rNwqlAFTKF
— dom 📈 (@domluszczyszyn) July 1, 2026
What role will Nurse play in San Jose?
In San Jose, look for him to play a top-four role as well. He might also play on the power play, though in an ideal world, those reins are handed over to Sam Dickinson and Luca Cagnoni sooner rather than later.
Because he plays on the left side, he’s more likely to be paired with Dmitry Orlov or Jacob Trouba. There’s an outside chance he plays alongside Michael Kesselring, but Kesselring is the third-pairing defenseman to start the season. I’d be interested to see what happens if/when Eric Pohlkamp comes up. Seeing Nurse paired with Pohlkamp might be ideal.
Nurse isn’t that far removed from a good season with the Oilers, so he could return to that form. Looking at his Evolving-Hockey regularized-adjusted plus-minus (RAPM) chart from 2022-25, you can see that Nurse was a dynamic force in creating opportunities for his team and helping his team possess the puck. He could return to that form this upcoming season.
One other note I will make about Nurse’s season with Edmonton last year is that in his 1,557 plus minutes of even-strength play, he had five different defensive partners that he played 100 minutes or more of ice time and one that he played nearly 99 minutes with.
His defensive partners ranged in skill from 376 minutes with Jake Walman and 289 minutes with Connor Murphy to 283 minutes with Alec Regula. He also played 194 minutes with Ty Emberson, who you might recall the Sharks traded away for Cody Ceci and a third-round pick.
Is Nurse an upgrade?
The real question Sharks fans need to ask as they examine what’s happening for the upcoming season is whether Nurse is an upgrade over the defensemen the Sharks had previously. The Sharks allowed three defensemen to walk in free agency (we’re only focusing on John Klingberg, Mario Ferraro and Vincent Desharnais) and traded another, Mukhamadullin.
While Nurse is not the home run defenseman the Sharks were looking for, it looks like he is an upgrade over some if not all of these defensemen. Let’s start with Klingberg. Look what happens when you compare Nurse’s RAPM chart to Klingberg’s at even-strength.
You find that while Klingberg produced more goals, GF/60, he and Nurse were pretty similar in the xGF/60 (expected goals per 60 minutes) category. This seems to mean that both were generating chances at roughly the same level; it’s just that players were converting on the offense Klingberg was creating, while they were not converting on the offense Nurse was creating.
Nurse’s CF/60 (Corsi for per 60 minutes) was also better than Klingberg’s, and his xGA/60 (expected goals against per 60 minutes) was much better. Generally speaking, he was better defensively than Klingberg last season.
Looking at Mario Ferraro and Nurse, you can see that, like Klingberg, Ferraro generated more goals than Nurse did last season. However, in this instance, Nurse was much better at creating offensive chances. Defensively, they were similar, though the slight edge goes to Ferraro.
In terms of time on ice, Ferraro is the closest of the bunch to Nurse. Both defensemen played top-four minutes for their respective teams last season.
Comparing Nurse to Desharnais is interesting. Offensively, Nurse was much better at driving play. However, defensively, Desharnais was clearly the better choice.
That said, Nurse played more than twice the minutes that Desharnais did. Desharnais averaged 18:11 in 53 games this past season. It’s the most ice time per game he’s had in his career. Nurse, on the other hand, averaged 20:58 in 82 games this season.
It would be curious to see if Desharnais could put up similar numbers if asked to take on a larger role.
Finally, looking at Nurse compared to the player he was traded for, Mukhamadullin. Looking at the stats, you can see that Nurse excels in the areas that I think the Sharks valued more and wanted to see more from Mukhamadullin this past season – the CF/60.
I don’t think the Sharks care whether a player is a stay-at-home defenseman or one who scores a ton of goals, as long as that player can transition the puck out of their own end. The CF/60 stat shows how many shots, missed shots, blocked shots and saved shots are generated when the player is on the ice. In other words, how well the puck stays in the other end and offense is created.
Nurse may be flawed a bit on defense, but he is able to do that. The Sharks wanted to see Mukhamadullin take that next step and do that this season. But as you can see from his CF/60 stat, he struggled mightily with that area of his game this season. And, if you look at the charts above, you can see that other defensemen on this list, Ferraro, Klingberg and Desharnais, did not have similar struggles.
Conclusion
Nurse isn’t the best defenseman in the league. But he is an upgrade, and that’s what the Sharks need right now. The cost of his contract might hurt in a few years, but there is some flexibility and Grier can move the defenseman in a year or two if he needs to. As it stands, this trade has made the Sharks a better team today and that’s what counts. San Jose needed to take a step forward.
So far, Grier has shown he can be a creative general manager who can think on his feet and make lemonade out of lemons. We have watched him take bad situations and turn them into palatable ones. This might not be the most ideal deal for the Sharks, but it was the one that was available in a world of insanely high trade prices and a really crappy free agent market.
It’s a long time until puck drop, so let’s see how things shake out.
