Who should the Oilers play with Darnell Nurse in 2025-26?
The Edmonton Oilers’ defensive core is currently in a fascinating situation. Evan Bouchard is the only top-four right-handed defenceman in the organization. On the other hand, they possess four different left-handed defencemen that can play in the top-four – Mattias Ekholm, Jake Walman, Brett Kulak, and Darnell Nurse.
Heading into the 2025-26 NHL season, the age-old question of who should play next to Nurse has yet to be definitively answered. Over the past few years, much ink has been spilled over which top-four right-handed defenceman on the trade or free agency market could fit well next to Nurse, but the Oilers never truly acquired one. Now, considering the present structure of Edmonton’s defence, could the answer be a left-handed defender with the ability to play the right side?
First, let’s dive into Nurse’s results next to all of Edmonton’s current NHL defenders. Here are the regular-season numbers over the past two years:
Furthermore, here are the numbers over the past two postseasons:
Many different conclusions can be drawn from these numbers. Let’s go through each of these one by one.
Firstly, Nurse’s most common defensive partner over the past two years (former Oiler Cody Ceci aside) has been Brett Kulak. They have produced a strong 57 percent expected goal share throughout the regular season. The goal share is low, but that can be reasonably attributed to an unsustainably low on-ice shooting percentage. However, the post-season results are another story, with both the actual and expected results well below average. In particular, Nurse and Kulak struggled quite a bit to move the puck out of their zone past Florida’s forecheck in the 2025 Cup Finals.
The Nurse – Stecher pair is quite intriguing. In the regular season, they managed very respectable numbers over a strong sample of 518 minutes, and in the limited minutes they played together in the 2025 playoffs, their performance generally remained decent. Interestingly, there does seem to be some chemistry here. Still, should Troy Stecher be a regular top-four defenceman on the defensive core of a cup contender? I’m not so sure.
Now, on paper, Nurse – Bouchard’s excellent possession and scoring chance results suggest they should spend much more time together. But, there’s a concerning trend in their numbers that should not be ignored; their actual goal share has consistently been worse than their expected results.
I believe the reason for this is that both Nurse and Bouchard individually can be prone to critical, five-alarm errors leading to goals against that may not always be reflected in (public) expected goal numbers, and this issue is further exacerbated when they play together. This theory seems to hold, seeing their awful defensive performance at the beginning of the first round against the LA Kings. Considering that Bouchard’s goal differential results have been substantially better next to each of Ekholm, Kulak, and Walman, it is certainly suboptimal to play him with Nurse.
As for Nurse – Ekholm, there could be potential here, and Ekholm’s defensive play could prove to be useful for Nurse. Their small sample regular-season results are quite solid. Still, Ekholm has hardly played any time on his off-side in Edmonton, and he has yet to play a full game next to Nurse; most of the Nurse – Ekholm minutes are occasional shifts here and there after a power-play or penalty-kill. Not to mention, I also remain a big proponent of keeping Ekholm and Bouchard together.
Nurse – Walman is perhaps the most interesting option on this list. In the limited minutes they played together as a full-time pair, their results have been superb. In the regular season, the Oilers out-scored opponents 8-to-2 with Walman on-ice, an outstanding 80 percent goal differential, while their expected goal share remains at 61 percent. Walman’s fantastic puck-moving ability suggests that this may not just be a mirage, and there could be genuine potential for a very strong stylistic fit here. It’s a shame they hardly spent any time together in the post-season.
And finally, I don’t see Ty Emberson spending any meaningful time in the top-four this upcoming season, barring major injuries. Emberson is expected to be the 7th defenceman heading into training camp, and nothing in his 5-on-5 play suggests he should play on the second-pair.
With all of that in mind in mind, it is obvious to me that Jake Walman deserves a much longer look next to Darnell Nurse. I believe it would be most optimal for the Oilers to start the 2025-26 season with this pairing and see what they can truly do. But if these results don’t hold over a large sample for whatever reason, perhaps it would be best to deploy Walman and Kulak as the second-pair, while Nurse and Stecher could be deployed as the third-pair.
All-in-all, Edmonton possesses multiple options with their defensive pairs this upcoming season, much more than before. We’ll see what the coaching staff ultimately decides to do.
