Yesterday afternoon Tom Gazzola of Edmonton Sports Talk broke the news that both Evander Kane and Darnell Nurse are not going to be full participants at training camp due to injuries. While Nurse has been skating in the informal skates, it looks like he has a lingering injury from the Oilers playoff run.
Hearing that Evander Kane & Darnell Nurse are expected to start training camp on the shelf due to injury.
— Tom Gazzola (@TomGazzola) September 11, 2024
Nurse has been on the ice for informal skates & continues to heal up a lingering injury from the playoffs. The projection is he will be good to go later in camp.
While the Kane injury shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone as his injury has been a talking point all offseason. The main talking conversation point was whether he would be on LTIR or not. While having Kane in the lineup would make this Oilers team better, an injured Nurse would be a big hit to the Oilers blueline.
I wrote about the concern of the Oilers having an injury on defense would be the worst case scenario. Even though Gazzola believes that Nurse will be ready to go later in camp, the fact that he has a lingering injury makes me nervous that he could re-aggravate it later in the season.
If you look at the defensive group, outside of Nurse, Bouchard and Ekholm there isn't really anyone I would trust to play top 3 minutes, while Kulak could move up in the short term it would be less than ideal. Regarding to the Kane injury, right now Kane is penciled on the third line, so if the Oilers are to not have him available at the start of the season is not as big of an issue for them as his impact as a third line player would be much less than Nurse who is a top 4 defenseman.
While I hope that both of these players can get healthy and back to 100% before the start of the regular season, I am keeping my eye on Darnell Nurse more than I am watching to progression of Kane. Having no Nurse would have a major impact on this team and if he is unable to go it alters this team significantly.