EDMONTON — At 31, Kyle Turris can see the end from here. He’s in the fight of his hockey life to push it back, to become a player that gets counted on again, the way he used to be through most of his 748-game career.
At 26, Darnell Nurse has found a new level. A place in the game he’s never been before, right there among the best defencemen in the National Hockey League. As he approaches his 400th game, he has figured out what so many said he would never solve.
Now the play builds when he carries the puck over the blue line, where it used to fizzle out.
Each player scored for Edmonton in a crucial, 3-2 overtime win at Toronto on Monday, Nurse solidifying himself as Edmonton’s No. 1 defenceman, Turris, jabbing his claws into that third-line centreman job that he lost early this season.
“We played a stronger second and a better third. We’re coming together as a team,” said Turris.
Nurse buried a shot on a two-on-one with Connor McDavid for the overtime winner, the kind of goal Turris used to score. Turris, meanwhile, had an Adam Larsson shot carom off his pants and into the Leafs goal — the exact type of goal that went off Nurse in overtime the previous game, when Auston Matthews’ shot ricocheted off his foot and past Mike Smith for a Leafs game-winner.
“That’ll be the joke, right? Two overtime goals, back-to-back,” Nurse chuckled. “It’s good to be on the other side of it this time.”
Nurse’s goal, his 12th of the season, makes him the leading goal scorer among NHL defencemen. He’s never scored more than 10 in a season — an 82-game season — and was always that defenceman who made the right play all the way to the offensive blue-line, but incrementally the wrong one, the closer he was to the opposing goal.
What’s changed?
“I’m generating more from the chances I have,” Nurse said. “Over the years I’ve found a way to get into good scoring positions, but I haven’t really capitalized. This year I’m getting myself back to those spots, and just shooting. We have great players on our team who find you when you get open. I just try to get to those spots.”
Turris is all in on getting back to those spots, areas on the ice and places in the game that he once owned but now rents, periodically.
He came here as a free agent, billed as the right-shot, third-line centreman that would round out the Oilers’ top-nine. With the trade deadline approaching, that GM Ken Holland is shopping for a right-handed third centre who can win faceoffs tells you all you need to know about how Turris’ season has gone.
“I know I have to play better, and I want to contribute more,” the likeable veteran said, happy to have scored — even if the puck went in off his butt, just his second goal of the season. “The timing of it has all been frustrating, but the bounce tonight, I feel like my legs are starting to come around… I know I need to play better, but I feel like I’m moving in that direction.”
Nashville thought Turris was done. That’s why they bought him out.
Then he came to Edmonton and played like Predators GM David Poile was right. Turris played his best game of the season, finally, on March 8. He went into COVID protocol and didn’t play again until Monday, where he matched up pretty well against a deep, good Maple Leafs team.
“I was happy for Turris. He’s gone through a lot,” head coach Dave Tippett said. “If anybody deserved to have one go in off his ass, it’s him.”
While we are slowly beginning to hear Nurse’s name tied to the 2022 Canadian Olympic team, Turris is another ineffective half-season away from the possibility of collecting two buy-out checks from two different teams. Everyone wants to see him succeed — that’s how well-liked Turris is within the game — but it comes down to production, and the veteran knows it.
NHL Newsletter
Meanwhile, that third-line centre gig is still sitting there, waiting to be claimed. Or reclaimed.
“Yes,” Turris acknowledged. “Like I said, I know I need to play better. I didn’t have a good first however many games this season. I know what I can do, and I know what I can contribute. I just need to show everyone that I can.”
And isn’t it the same with his team?
The Oilers knew they could beat Toronto — they’d beaten them twice already this season — but the cold hard fact was that a loss on Monday and Toronto would be able to lord a five-game winning streak over Edmonton, should they meet in the playoffs.
Toronto was the better team in the game’s first half, and perhaps on the whole. But Mike Smith continued his renaissance season in goal, and stoned Matthews in overtime to create the rebound that went up ice and ended up in Toronto’s net.
It closes the season series at 6-1-2 for Toronto, 3-5-1 for Edmonton. But take away that three-game Leafs sweep in Edmonton, and you likely get a better picture of the parity between the two clubs.
“We look at the body of work,” Nurse said. “The six games that we played tight, hard, are more indicative of who we are as a team. They’re good games. You never know — you may be meeting late on in the playoffs.”
There was more on the line in this game than the Oilers were letting on. You knew it, they just wouldn’t say it.
“I sat here this morning and you all had questions about if we’re a team that was afraid to play in this type of series against this type of team,” Nurse told the media. “This shows what we’re capable of as a team.”
