Oilers insiders sound the alarm on Major problem for Darnell Nurse

Analysts have already began sounding the alarm on the play of Nurse early this season, highlighting his poor defensive and offensive metrics. Now it looks to be developing into a major storyline.

Now after 7 games of play, Darnell Nurse's defensive metrics are astoundingly poor. According to analyst Jonathan Willis, the Oilers only own 29% of 5v5 expected goal share with Nurse on the ice - and the results are actually worse.

If you remove Nurse's poor defensive metrics, the Oilers blue line grades out very well.

For a $9.25M defender and a key piece of the Oilers roster, results this poor is nowhere near acceptable. If this level of play continues, the Oilers will be forced to demote him to the bottom pair.

By these underlying numbers, Nurse ranks in the bottom 5 of all NHL defenceman.

Nurse has been without his primary partner of Jake Walman to begin the season, but thankfully he's just now returned from injury. The Oilers will seriously be hoping that Walman can settle down Nurse's game, and that Nurse can improve himself.

In Walman's first game back in the lineup against the Senators, Nurse unfortunately didn't post much better results. It's still a small sample size, but this is a serious issue to watch as the year goes on.

It's not news that Nurse isn't worth his $9.25M contract, but what he's given the Oilers early this season has been nowhere near acceptable for a championship team.