Oilers Need to Shake Up Defence Pairings to be Competitive This Year
The Edmonton Oilers should break up the Nurse-Ceci pairing.
The Edmonton Oilers are up against the cap with not a lot of money to spend. They still need to re-sign Ryan McLeod and Evan Bouchard, but only have $6.38-million in cap space to do it.
Rumors are swirling around the Oilers potentially acquiring one of Brett Pesce or Erik Karlsson. Depending on the price tag, both of those defenders would be great additions.
Philip Broberg is the key to the Oilers defence this year. He still has a lot of potential and should not be traded. He should be paired with Darnell Nurse while Brett Kulak and Cody Ceci pair up at even strength.
Having a Nurse-Broberg pairing allows them to more evenly distribute ice time among all three pairings. Mattias Ekholm and Bouchard stay together, and take the bulk of the ice time. Ceci-Kulak and Nurse-Broberg get an even split of even strength ice time.
Related: Oilers 2023 Off-Season Guide
Nurse thrives playing in offensive situations. In 2022-23 he had the best offensive season of his career. Broberg had a lot of offensive skill, but also has to develop his defensive game and needs to be given more minutes to do that. Ken Holland is making the choice to keep him and Jay Woodcroft needs to make the choice to play him.