World Cup Quarterfinal Star Players in Sharks Terms
Once every four years, sports fans from across North America tune into soccer at a much higher rate to watch a battle of star players from around the world compete at the FIFA World Cup. Many of those sports fans know next to nothing about the players taking the field, so let's put the upcoming quarterfinal in terms that San Jose Sharks can understand by comparing some superstars to their Sharks counterparts. Let's start with probably the most well known player worldwide that remains in the tournament.
Video Transcript
What do you make of this, this move?
Are you surprised that San Jose took on the whole contract and, and how do you see Nurse performing in San Jose?
I'm not surprised at all, actually.
I'm, I know that the narrative out there is that they were gonna have to retain on this, and I know the Oilers going into the trade said they were not gonna do that.
that was a priority for them.
Stan Bowman wanted to make sure he had the cap flexibility.
So talk of $2 or $3 million retention is, was never gonna happen, which is probably why, you know, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston were all probably low-balling the Oilers in terms of their offers, if any were actually made, because there was just a small group of people who were interested in taking on that trade.
Once he opened up his window, 'cause he realized this trade was not happening, and then San Jose got involved, and they have a ton of cap space.
And anybody who says that they should be worried about the fact they're spending money on Trouba-Nurse just need to look at the cap space for next year.
They got plenty.
Like, they've got lots of room.
and then when maybe Anaheim gets into the mix, and I don't know if they were officially ever in there, but they were interested.
Now you have five teams, maybe more, who could be making this deal.
So it doesn't shock me at all that Nurse was able to be moved without any retention.
And when you look at the salary cap now, the Oilers paid for the hard part of Darnell Nurse, right?
They paid for the 9.25 when he wasn't giving them real value.
Now the salary cap is so high that 9.25 million isn't even that much.
Like, if you see Trouba at 8.5, I think Nurse is a better player than Trouba is, right?
So you've got a serviceable guy in Darnell Nurse who will be in your top four.
He's proven he can play.
He took the Oilers, in part, to two Stanley Cup finals.
Yeah, he was ragged on here because he got too much money.
but it wasn't his fault.
He was still a good defenseman.
But when you have that, and he said it in his media interview yesterday, he's like, "Sometimes when you have a lot of money that you're being paid, there's nothing you can do about it."
When you're-- And he did admit he didn't play as well as he could have at times, but, you know, you just can't live that down.
So I do think it was toxic.
It was one of those things where he couldn't come back, even though I thought maybe there was a, a window for that to happen.
he just wanted to move on.
And so when he opened it up to San Jose, it just opened up a, a bunch of doors for the Oilers and I think it was, pretty easy to fit there.
San Jose made a lot of sense, and they were interested from the very beginning.
They just needed to get on that list.
So, it doesn't shock me at all that he was traded.
it doesn't shock me there was no salary retention.
I think he's a good fit in San Jose.
I have no idea how he'll play with a fresh start and a new perspective.
but I think San Jose did a good job.
I think the Oilers really won here.
They picked up Brian Shea right after that deal, so I think they were looking at him the whole time.
they made other signings, spent some money wisely, got the Anderson deal done.
So, I think this was all sort of a plan that just needed to figure itself out, and San Jose just had to get in the mix.
And once they were, it all just sort of fell into place.
