Edmonton Cleared $9.25 Million by Moving Darnell Nurse. Here Is Where It Went
The Oilers sent Darnell Nurse to San Jose on July 1 without retaining a dollar. Six weeks later, most of that money is already committed.
The Oilers did not get a first-round pick for Darnell Nurse. They got out from under the contract, and for Edmonton that was the entire point of the exercise.
On July 1, the Oilers sent the 31-year-old defenceman to San Jose for defenceman Shakir Mukhamadullin and the rights to Zachary Sharp. The number that shaped the deal is the one Edmonton did not touch: the Oilers retained nothing, so all $9.25 million of Nurse’s cap hit moved to San Jose, with four years still to run on the eight-year, $74-million contract he signed in August 2021. Taking that on in full is the reason the Sharks did not have to send back a premium asset, and it is also the reason Edmonton was willing to accept the return it did.
Twelve seasons, and an argument that never ended
Nurse leaves as one of the most argued-about players of the Connor McDavid era. Edmonton took him seventh overall in 2013 and got 798 games and 324 points out of him, 88 goals and 236 assists across twelve seasons. He was a genuine top-four minute-eater who spent the back half of his contract being asked to justify a cap hit that only a handful of defencemen in the league can justify. The hockey case for keeping him was real. The accounting case for moving him was louder, and it won.
San Jose is now the team carrying that argument. The Sharks bought four years of a defenceman entering his thirties at full freight, which is the sort of transaction a rebuilding club makes when cap space is the asset it has the most of and it wants something tangible in return.
Edmonton spent the savings quickly
The Oilers walked away from July 1 with roughly $9.25 million in projected space, per PuckPedia, and they have not sat on it. The crease came first. Edmonton acquired goaltender Devon Levi from Buffalo along with a 2028 seventh-round pick in exchange for a 2028 third-rounder, a low-cost swing on a goalie whose Sabres tenure never settled into a defined role, and added Frederik Andersen on a reported one-year, $1-million deal. Daily Hive, citing PuckPedia, now puts Edmonton’s remaining space at about $7.25 million after that and a run of depth business.
That is the honest shape of the summer. The Nurse trade did not fund a marquee addition. It funded a goaltending reset and the flexibility to keep the roster’s edges filled, which is a less exciting use of $9.25 million but arguably a more defensible one given where the Oilers keep losing games.
Mukhamadullin is the part nobody is pricing
The forgotten piece here is that Edmonton did get a player. Mukhamadullin is a big left-shot defenceman who arrives cost-controlled at an organization that has needed cheap blue-line minutes for years, which is precisely the profile a cap-strapped contender is supposed to be hunting. If he becomes a legitimate top-four defender, the Oilers turned $9.25 million and four years of risk into a younger, cheaper version of the same role. If he does not, they traded a top-four defenceman for cap relief and a lottery ticket.
For Canadian bettors sizing up Edmonton’s win total and Cup market this fall, that is the question worth sitting with. The Oilers are cheaper and more flexible than they were in June. Whether they are better on the blue line on opening night is a separate matter, and the answer depends almost entirely on a 24-year-old who has never been asked to play these minutes.
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