March 8, 2026 by Raghu Sharma

The focus of this piece is on the current state of the Edmonton Oilers and where we are in Year 11 of Connor McDavid’s NHL career.

Drafted first-overall back in 2015, the hype surrounding McDavid was unlike any other prospect since Sidney Crosby a decade earlier. McDavid had been coveted for years, but how skills translate to the NHL are always unknown, even for first-overall picks.

Fast forward more than a decade later, and McDavid has exceeded all expectations placed upon him. He was named the youngest captain in NHL history at 19, he’s a five-time Art Ross Trophy winner, three-time Hart Trophy winner, four-time Ted Lindsay Award winner, and one-time “Rocket” Richard Trophy winner.

In the playoffs, the Oilers captain set the NHL record for most assists in a single playoff year (34) and joined Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux as the only players to ever reach the 40-point plateau. He also won the Conn Smythe Award and Olympic most valuable player, despite being on the wrong end of the results.

The future Hockey Hall of Famer has achieved what most players can only dream of doing in just 11 seasons, but he is often shunned for not winning the big prize or showing up in the big game, because of losses to the Florida Panthers in the Stanley Cup Final and Team USA in the Gold Medal Game.

When it comes to the Oilers, McDavid and his counterpart Leon Draisaitl, have often carried the load and made a lot of the roster constructions performed by the likes of Peter Chiarelli, Ken Holland, Jeff Jackson and currently Stan Bowman look better than they actually are. However, as amazing as these two have been, they won’t continue to be forever, and they need help.

While the Oilers have come oh so close over the past five years, and especially the closest you can come the last two years, until you win the big one, the detractors will often say they couldn’t get it done.

On the most recent California road trip, the Oilers scored a massive 17 goals and still found themselves escaping with only two points in three games. The Pacific Division is not what it once was, and teams like the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks are on the upswing. The Oilers currently have 215 goals for (second only to the Colorado Avalanche with 221). However, their biggest Achilles heel has been their defensive abilities with 206 Goals Against (29th in the league).

The Oilers have become an old team with no identity. Veteran presence is important, but those players also need to be able to perform and what the Oilers lost this past summer more than any other year is the glue guys who had personality and bite in the room in favour of turnover especially in the bottom-six forward group.

All of this in the end attributes to one major factor and the one that is finally under the barrel of the gun by even local media. That is Darnell Nurse and the headline of this article fully reflects why the leadership core struggles in the room. When asked about the Oilers needing their leaders to be better and asking about his own performance not being good enough, Nurse responded with “good analysis”. McDavid, Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins will often take personal accountability on being better, which is something in Nurse hasn’t done in his entire career.

What makes things worse is that Nurse’s contract, which was signed for a ridiculous eight year by $9.25 million after the 2020-21 Covid-shortened season, was a prime example of getting lucky. The Oilers in an all-Canadian division were the beneficiaries of a lot of bad teams, and Nurse leveraged the market, and a poor GM in Ken Holland to lock the Oilers into this horrible contract that has impacted them for the past five years. This has limited how much flexibility the Oilers have had during free agency and the trade deadline.

We are quickly approaching the two-year extension McDavid signed this past October, and the Oilers are not guaranteed to make the playoffs, let alone have a strong chance at a third straight trip to the Final. If the Oilers do miss this year, or have an early exit, some very hard decisions will have to be made this summer and at the forefront should be trying to do whatever it takes to offload the Nurse contract.

Contract aside, his attitude needs to better for a leader in the locker room, and he often struggles at the fundamentals of playing defence nearly 800 games into his career. Maybe Nurse can prove me wrong, but at this point in his career, he would need to be a major part of winning a Cup and not be the anchor he has been on the ride so far.

I really hope that Nurse takes a look in the mirror and analyses what he needs to do better before it’s too late for the Oilers to do anything about it.