San Jose had a choice between two big-name defensemen, and the Sharks didn’t hesitate to go with Darnell Nurse.
That detail, reported by Elliotte Friedman on 32 Thoughts, cuts right through the chatter that Nurse had no market. Friedman said the Sharks could have gone with Morgan Rielly, but preferred the Edmonton Oilers defenseman instead.
“Look, it’s interesting. They could have had Rielly, they got Nurse.
I heard they really preferred Nurse. I heard that was a preference.
They had a choice, and they took Nurse over Rielly.”
The decision matters because Rielly came with the cleaner cap number and the more obvious fit on paper. His $7.5 million cap hit is nearly $2 million lower than Nurse’s $9.25 million, and even in a season that was below his usual standard, he still finished with 36 points and a career-worst minus rating. For a Sharks team with a young core built around Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith, plenty of observers saw Rielly as the better puck-moving option, the kind of defenseman who could help drive play and run a power play.
Instead, San Jose chose the heavier, more physical defender.
That part of the story becomes clearer when you look at the trade mechanics. Rielly had a full no-move clause, but he reportedly gave Toronto a list of only four Western Conference teams he’d be willing to join, and San Jose was on it.
Nurse’s situation was different. He had submitted his original list, and the Sharks were not on it.
It took him going back to that list, along with input from several trusted sources, before he changed his mind. That timing may have mattered.
Sharks general manager Mike Grier framed the move around what Nurse brings on the ice: a mobile, physical veteran who can handle heavy top-pair minutes against elite competition every night. That’s the profile San Jose wanted, and the club has leaned even further into that identity since then by signing Jacob Trouba, giving the Sharks two proven defensemen who are more likely to punish opponents than try to outskill them.
There’s also a belief inside San Jose that Nurse still has another gear offensively. He wasn’t used on Edmonton’s power play except for the season he played well enough to earn his big contract, so the Sharks may think a different role can unlock more production.
The bigger takeaway is that at least one team clearly believed in Nurse’s value. San Jose did not view the contract as a deal-breaker.
They saw a player who might just need a reset. “When you play in a Canadian market and a passionate hockey market, it’s difficult,” Grier said in a post-free-agency press conference.
“Darnell unfortunately went through that. Sometimes it’s tough to get out of when the media starts getting on you.
Then the fans start getting on you. It’s a tough cycle.
I think coming here will be a breath of fresh air for him.”
For Toronto, the more immediate issue is what this means for Rielly. With San Jose no longer in the picture, the list of realistic landing spots keeps getting smaller.
Anaheim had been another possible destination, but they’re tied up in the Leon Carlsson situation, and that only adds to the burden with their other pending RFAs. At the moment, they have no mental capacity to work on a Rielly trade.
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The conversation now shifts to whether that makeover is enough to make the playoff chase feel real. Players sound encouraged about the direction, but Mike Grier has kept the focus on improvement rather than a hard postseason declaration, and the biggest questions still sit in the same places they did before: the defense and the goaltending. Yaroslav Askarov is expected to keep developing into a potential starter, with Alex Nedeljkovic back on a two-year extension and Eric Comrie added for depth, but the Sharks still have to prove the new pieces can hold up when the games tighten. [Read more 🡒]