The Edmonton Oilers have turned what seemed like a long off-season for Oilers fans into must-watch material.

From firing the calm and collected former head coach Kris Knoblauch to the potential hiring of the commanding and controversial Mike Babcock, and now longtime Oilers defenceman Darnell Nurse reportedly requesting a trade and submitting a 3–5 team list — the Oilers have kept things spicy with the draft and free agency still to come.

Trade discussions surrounding Nurse will certainly heat up in the coming weeks, if not days, and with that, we can start speculating what the Oilers’ blue line will look like without their longest-serving D-man.

At this point, the return for Nurse remains unclear, and whether a defenceman is coming back the other way is still up in the air. What is clear, though, is that once Nurse is moved, the Oilers will need to reshape their blue line. And if the return doesn’t include a defenceman, I propose the Oilers bring back pending unrestricted free agent Brett Kulak, Stony Plain’s own, to shore up their back end.

The case for bringing back Brett Kulak

Trading Nurse organizes the Oilers’ blue line more appropriately. Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard will likely be the first pairing next season, and it slides Jake Walman, whose seven-year contract at a $7 million average annual value (AAV) kicks in in 2026–27, into the second pairing on the left side.

I’ve mentioned before that the left-shot Walman played on his offside on the right in 2025–26, but it felt like the Oilers were trying to force a square peg into a round hole, and it just wasn’t a good fit, in my view.

Hopefully, the Oilers can re-sign unrestricted free agent Connor Murphy, who played solid defensively on the second pair in his short tenure, though Sportsnet’s Mark Spector posted on X........

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