NHL trade grades: Darnell Nurse makes sense for Sharks, but is he worth the cost?

The tradeSharks get: Defenseman Darnell NurseOilers get: Defensemen Shakir Mukhamadullin and Zack SharpHarman Dayal: It’s no secret the Sharks needed to overhaul their blue line this summer. San Jose’s forward group is playoff-caliber, but its back end was arguably the worst in the NHL this past season, as Dmitry Orlov, Mario Ferraro, John Klingberg and Timothy Liljegren were the team’s top four in average ice time. The Sharks’ blue line has certainly leveled up after adding Michael Kesselring (an excellent buy-low move), Jacob Trouba and Nurse, but the contractual value of the latter two is questionable.San Jose has an abundance of short-term cap space, so overpaying for either Trouba or Nurse as a veteran top-four minute-muncher made sense, but having both eat up a combined $17.5 million against the cap for the next four years is quite inefficient.Nurse is athletic and physically gifted, but he’s prone to big mistakes with and without the puck, and his passing on breakouts is often a weakness. It’s fascinating, stylistically, that between Nurse, Trouba and Kesselring, San Jose has three defensemen who love to aggressively jump up in the rush but get caught out of position and don’t always make the smartest reads. It’s a trio that will likely have many highs and lows.The Sharks still have roughly $14 million in projected cap room (before accounting for RFA Collin Graf’s next contract), and Dmitry Orlov’s $6.5 million AAV is coming off the books at the end of next season, so Nurse’s $9.25 million AAV won’t be prohibitive in the short term.