June 9, 2024 by Ryan Lotsberg

The pairing of Darnell Nurse and Cody Ceci is the topic du jour in Edmonton once again on Sunday. The pairing was on the ice for both of the non-empty net goals scored by the Florida Panthers in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final. Nurse has been on the ice for more five-on-five goals allowed than any other player in the league in the playoffs, and the frequency of those goals seems to rise when Ceci is Nurse’s partner.

Nurse and Ceci have been taking heat for the last two years. As I did with Nurse as an individual earlier in these playoffs, I want to be as fair and objective as I can be in my analysis of their performance as a pairing. I took a look at their numbers in the regular season and the playoffs in each of the seasons that Ceci has been an Oiler. All stats used in this piece are from Natural Stat Trick.

Nurse and Ceci have played together for the majority of the time that Ceci has been a member of the Edmonton Oilers. They were a serviceable top pairing in 2021-22 after Adam Larsson left in free agency in the summer of 2021. They allowed 2.63 goals against per sixty minutes (GA/60) that season. They held a 53.19% five-on-five goal share (GF%), a 54.20% expected goals percentage (xGF%), and an impressive 61.98% high danger chances for percentage (HDCF%) that season. Their high danger goals for percentage (HDGF%) was 54.17%. A strong number, but one that is several notches below their HDCF%, which is a sign of trouble.

Their performance dipped a little bit in the 2022 playoffs. They were below 50% in both Corsi for percentage (CF%) and shots for percentage (SF%). They had a 51.52% GF% and a 47.15% xGF%. They got the better of their opponents in HDCF% (51.28%) and HDGF% (60%) though.

The pairing remained intact for the 2022-23 season. They started out as the top pairing, but were supplanted once Mattias Ekholm arrived on the scene and his pairing with Evan Bouchard started dominating. Nurse and Ceci’s GA/60 held fairly steady from the year before, going from 2.63 to 2.66. Their GF% slipped to 48.94%, and their expected goal share slipped to 50.52%. Their goal metrics were about as average as average gets that season. Their HDCF% was 53.03%, which was still good but not nearly as good as it was in 2021-22. However, their HDGF% was only 43.14%.

Nurse and Ceci had a rough 2023 playoffs. There’s no other way to put it. The only redeeming number from that run was their 71.43% GF% in the first round. They were outscored 1-6 in the five games that Nurse played in the second round. That completely washed out their fortunate GF% from round one.

Their numbers from this season were actually better than I expected them to be. They were above 50% in every shot, goal, and scoring chance metric. Their GA/60 actually went down to 2.42. They took a lot of heat in the regular season despite having positive metrics across the board as a pairing. The exceptional play of the Ekholm-Bouchard pairing and the surprisingly strong pairing of Brett Kulak and Vincent Desharnais made the Nurse-Ceci pairing look far worse than it actually was in the regular season.

It has all fallen apart for the Nurse-Ceci pairing in these playoffs though. Their GA/60 in these playoffs is 4.31. Last year it was 3.61 GA/60 when they were as terrible as they were. Their GF% is an abysmal 25% (4-12), and their xGF% is a dreadful 34.44%. Nurse himself has now been on the ice for 23 goals against at five-on-five, and Ceci has been on for fourteen. They are numbers one and two among Oilers defencemen in five-on-five goals allowed in these playoffs. Their HDCF% is only 36.62%, and HDGF% is only 28.57%. 

They are also giving up high danger scoring chances at a higher rate than they ever have in these playoffs. Their high danger scoring chances against per sixty minutes (HDCA/60) in these playoffs is 16.16. It was 13.55 last year. That figure is only 8.04 for the Ekholm-Bouchard pairing for comparison’s sake.

Mark Spector asked Oilers Head Coach Kris Knoblauch about the Nurse-Ceci pairing in Sunday’s media availability. Spector asked if Knoblauch has access to any numbers that aren’t publicly available that tell a different story about the Nurse-Ceci pairing. 

Knoblauch said that “[w]e look at players involved in scoring chances for and against… both of them were involved in two scoring chances against, and both of them they got scored against. So, I guess if you look at actual goals for and against, it’s not favourable. The expected goals for and against is not nearly, it doesn’t paint the same picture at all, completely different.”

The numbers on Natural Stat Trick don’t align with Knoblauch’s assessment when evaluating the playoffs in their entirety. However, they had a 62.14% xGF% in Game 1 against the Panthers despite being outscored 0-2 at five-on-five. Knoblauch is an intelligent man. He isn’t going to throw his players under the bus in the media at any point, and certainly not in the Stanley Cup Final. Knoblauch was able to pick an accurate stat that related to Game 1 that painted his players in a more positive light, so credit to him for that; but the expected goals percentage for the Nurse-Ceci pairing has been extremely low in these playoffs.

I have defended Nurse a lot in these playoffs, and I came to this pairing’s defence in my postgame write up on Saturday night. I still maintain that Nurse has not been at fault for the vast majority of the goals against that he has been on the ice for in these playoffs. I feel that both goals against in Game 1 were more the result of forwards failing to beat their checks to the scoring areas than they were the result of errors from Nurse and Ceci.

Related: Deep Dive: Nurse’s 2024 playoff struggles

Ceci was forced to slide over to cover Aleksander Barkov because Barkov beat Connor McDavid up the ice on the first goal. Ceci was in a position to break up Barkov’s cross-crease pass to Carter Verhaeghe, but that didn’t happen. Barkov made a nice pass. Zach Hyman stopped skating once he got over the defensive blue line and he failed to get to Verhaeghe.

Sam Bennett dumped the puck in and chased it himself on the second goal. Ceci chose to take the body on Bennett rather than the puck. Ceci pinned Bennett against the boards, but Bennett was still able to pass the puck into the slot. Ceci made the wrong choice there, but I’m sure every defenceman made that choice multiple times in the game without it resulting in a goal against. The play was still defendable after that moment. Nurse was standing in front of the net covering the slot, as is his responsibility in that situation. The puck got through him, which he was upset about. He acknowledged that he should’ve got a piece of it after the game. He might’ve been positioned a little bit too low and a little bit too far to the right, and he looked bad as a result.

The bigger problem for me on that goal was that Evander Kane was in defensive position on Evan Rodrigues, the eventual goal scorer, when Rodrigues was near the blue line. Kane fell asleep as Rodrigues snuck by him and into the slot to bury the goal.

Related: Call Outs, Stand Outs, and Shoutouts: Panthers escape with Game 1 win over the Oilers

I feel bad for Nurse and Ceci because it just isn’t going their way and it isn’t always their fault, but the bottom line is that the pairing just isn’t working. The pairing has been split up at different times in the playoffs. Splitting them up settled the team down in the second round. Putting them back together has only led to issues.

The issue that I see with them in the numbers is that they consistently have a lower HDGF% than their HDCF%. Aside from the last two playoff seasons, their HDCF% has always been above 50%. Their HDGF% is always lower. That matches the eye test, which says that they struggle to keep high danger scoring chances out of their net.

Knoblauch has made some bold choices pertaining to healthy scratches in these playoffs. Ryan McLeod, Warren Foegele, Corey Perry, and Vincent Desharnais have all been healthy scratches in these playoffs. It might be time for another such move with Ceci in my opinion. Every partner that Ceci has had in these playoffs has a better xGF% away from him than they do with him. He is bringing down the performance of every one of his defence partners. 

Desharnais needs to get back into the lineup at some point, and he has played with Nurse in the playoffs and in the regular season. Philip Broberg just put up a clean sheet and looked great in 17:55 of ice time playing on his off side in Game 1, so he’s not coming out of the lineup. Bouchard certainly isn’t coming out of the lineup. That leaves Ceci on the right side as the only option to pull in favour of Desharnais.

Knoblauch said that he and the coaching staff have not made any decisions on the lineup for Game 2. I’ll be curious to see how they choose to handle this situation.