Darnell Nurse is a Shark now, but it almost didn’t happen that way. Before the Edmonton Oilers shipped their big-ticket defenseman to San Jose, they had another trade lined up. And according to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, that other deal was with the Boston Bruins.
Oilers Hub posted on X that the trade was already in place to send Nurse to Boston. Then one Bruins player involved in the deal exercised their no-trade clause and shut the whole thing down.
The player rumored to have vetoed the move is Nikita Zadorov. He’s been with the Bruins since the start of the 2024-25 season and has missed only two games in the last two years. He’s in year three of a six-year contract that pays him $5 million per season, and yeah, that contract includes a modified no-trade clause. So if he didn’t want to go to Edmonton, he didn’t have to.
Nobody has confirmed Zadorov was the guy. But the rumor makes sense. Boston’s not going to publicly confirm who blocked a trade that died before it hit the wire, but the logic is there. The Oilers wanted to dump Nurse’s monster contract. The Bruins wanted a top-pairing defenseman. They just couldn’t agree on who was heading the other way.
Shakir Mukhamadullin changed the math
Looking back, the Oilers probably feel fine about how this worked out. The Sharks deal brought them Shakir Mukhamadullin, a former first-round pick who’s still just 22 years old. He’s a restricted free agent expected to sign for around $2 million per year. That’s a lot cheaper than Nurse’s $9.25 million cap hit, and Mukhamadullin is a high-upside prospect with size and mobility.
If the Bruins trade had gone through, Edmonton would have taken on Zadorov’s $5 million cap hit for four more years. That’s not a terrible contract by itself, but it’s not the kind of money you want to commit to a middle-pairing defenseman when you’re trying to rebuild your blue line on a budget. The Oilers basically traded one big contract for a slightly smaller one, which doesn’t move the needle much.
With the Sharks, they got pure cap relief and a young player who could grow into a top-four role. That’s a better outcome than taking on term and money for a guy who might not be a huge upgrade over what they already had.
The Bruins, meanwhile, are still looking for a defensive upgrade. They’ve got cap space, but they need to find a trade partner who doesn’t run into the same no-trade clause problem. It’s not easy moving big money around the league right now, and every team with a NTC attached to a contract knows it.
So Nurse is in San Jose. Zadorov is still in Boston. And somewhere in Edmonton’s front office, there’s a trade that almost happened but didn’t. That’s the NHL for you.
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