This is the 2025-26 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Darnell Nurse

33 points, 72 penalty minutes, and a 53.4 per cent chance share on the most criticised contract in the league.

Season	Team	GP	G	A	PTS	+/-	PIM	PP	SH	GW	S	S%	TOI

2014-15	EDM	2	0	0	0	-2	0	0	0	0	2	0.0	17:00
2015-16	EDM	69	3	7	10	-13	60	0	0	0	120	2.5	20:14
2016-17	EDM	44	5	6	11	0	33	0	0	0	85	5.9	17:01
2017-18	EDM	82	6	20	26	+15	67	0	0	2	194	3.1	22:15
2018-19	EDM	82	10	31	41	-5	87	1	0	1	196	5.1	23:49
2019-20	EDM	71	5	28	33	-2	48	0	0	1	170	2.9	23:27
2020-21	EDM	56	16	20	36	+27	57	1	0	2	154	10.4	25:38
2021-22	EDM	71	9	26	35	+18	54	0	2	0	203	4.4	25:03
2022-23	EDM	82	12	31	43	+26	64	0	2	4	203	5.9	23:30
2023-24	EDM	81	10	22	32	+3	79	1	1	2	181	5.5	21:54
2024-25	EDM	76	5	28	33	+11	72	0	1	1	188	2.7	22:22
2025-26 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	716	81	219	300	+78	621	3	6	13	1696	4.8	22:41

This Season So Far

The 2025-26 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

5 goals and 28 assists in 76 games for 33 points, plus-11, on 22:22 a night and 188 shots.

53.6 per cent at five-on-five, the 82nd percentile — which on this club is the fourth-best figure among defencemen and in the league is a good one. His on-ice goals were 61-52 against an expected 62-53, so the results roughly matched the play.

The Finesse Game

The skating is genuinely excellent for a 6-4 defenceman — he covers ground, he can carry the puck out, and he closes gaps with pace rather than with reach.

188 shots and 5 goals is a poor return and the release has never threatened anybody. 28 assists at 22 minutes a night is modest, and the first pass is where the errors live: he attempts it late and under pressure more often than he should.

The Physical Game

6-4 and 215, and he plays a genuinely hard game. He hits, he clears his crease, and he will fight anybody in the league.

72 penalty minutes over 76 games is the highest total on the club and a real cost even on a unit that killed at the best rate in hockey.

The Intangibles

Eleven seasons in one organisation, a captaincy in all but name, and a contract that has been criticised more thoroughly than any other in the league.

The honest reading is more forgiving than the reputation: an 81st-percentile chance share in 22 minutes a night on a Cup finalist is a good season. He is being paid as a number-one defenceman and he is a good number-two, which is an overpayment rather than a disaster.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

measuredcomputed here from the season's own data
a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

workhorse· carries the load at even strength
18:18 a game at five-on-five, 90th percentile among defencemen
Season to season, this measure repeats well (0.78) · 58% keep it
transitiona strength· carries it out; gains the line under control
“he covers ground, he can carry the puck out, and he closes gaps with pace rather than with reach.”
punishinga strength· finishes checks; hurts people legally
“6-4 and 215, and he plays a genuinely hard game.”
clears-the-creasea strength· moves grown men off the front of his net
“He hits, he clears his crease, and he will fight anybody in the league.”
nastya strength· hard to play against; the edge is the point
“he will fight anybody in the league”
leadershipa strength· the room, and who holds it
“Eleven seasons in one organisation, a captaincy in all but name”

The numbers underneath

On the ice

Five-on-five, 2024-25 · 1,391 minutes

Expected goals: 53.6%; 82nd pct
Shot attempts: 51.8%; 71st pct

Goals while he was on the ice: 61 for, 52 against. Expected: 61.5 and 53.2.

The eye and the numbers

Hindsight

Report

60th

Numbers

82nd

The numbers rank him 22 points above where the report does. It was written for a back edition, with the seasons that followed already known. Neither the agreement nor the gap says anything about the eye, and this report is excluded from the club-level comparison for the same reason. Why the numbers land there sets out the club he did it on, the minutes he played and the men he played them with.

Both bars are percentiles among the 637 skaters in this edition with a report and enough ice time. The report bar ranks the mean of the grades above — 74 on their own scale — against every other report's mean. The numbers bar ranks his share of expected goals. A gap is a disagreement about where he belongs, not two scales talking past each other.

Tracked

NHL Edge, 2024-25 · 76 games

Top speed: 22.0 mph; 63rd pct
Bursts over 20 mph: 1.24 a game
Distance: 3.16 miles a game
Hardest shot: 98.2 mph; 92nd pct

A top speed is a season's best, and a man who takes more shifts gets more tries at one; the percentile is the feed's own, against every skater, and says less between a top-pair defenceman and a fourth-line wing than it does between two men in the same job. The counts are shown per game for the same reason.

Usual linemates

2024-25 · 1391 minutes at five-on-five

Share of his five-on-five ice time spent alongside each player, measured from shift charts. Special teams are excluded: a power-play unit is not a line.

Why the numbers land there

Five-on-five, 2024-25

The club: EDM took 54.3% of the expected goals as a club. His own share is 53.6% — 0.7 below the club he did it on.
The role: Third pair, 1,391 minutes at five-on-five — 95th percentile in ice time.

With and without

Teammate	Together	Him apart	Mate apart
Leon Draisaitl	59.1%	50.5%	59.8%
Troy Stecher	51.2%	54.8%	45.1%
Vasily Podkolzin	57.6%	52.0%	57.3%

59.1% together, 50.5% for him apart and 59.8% for Draisaitl apart. He was worse away from Draisaitl, who was no better away from him — he needed that pairing more than Draisaitl did.

Expected-goal share while both were on the ice, and for each man in the minutes he played without the other. Apart is the pair subtracted from his own totals. It does not settle who was carrying whom — apart from each other, both were still playing with somebody — but it does say whether the share travelled when the pairing broke up.

Where he shoots from

goal on goal missed

248 unblocked shots in 2024-25, 5 of them goals. His median goal came from 33 feet. 9% of his shots came from inside twenty feet, 69% from beyond forty.