NHL trade grades: Darnell Nurse makes sense for Sharks, but is he worth the cost?
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Live Big BoardUFA GuideTeam’s Salary-Cap RankedTrade BoardAnalysisNHL trade grades: Darnell Nurse makes sense for Sharks, but is he worth the cost?
Darnell Nurse is staying in the Pacific Division. Kiyoshi Mio / Imagn Images
By Corey Pronman and Harman DayalJuly 1, 2026 4:58 pm EDT UpdatedThe trade
Sharks get: Defenseman Darnell Nurse
Oilers get: Defensemen Shakir Mukhamadullin and Zack Sharp
Harman Dayal: It’s no secret that 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 average ice-time leaders. 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.
However, the worry is that this could create cap problems down the road. Macklin Celebrini, Will Smith, and Yaraslov Askarov will need new contracts next summer. Michael Misa, Sam Dickinson and Igor Chernyshov will also be RFAs in the summer of 2028, not to mention Ivar Stenberg in 2029. In other words, San Jose has boatloads of cap space now, but it’s going to disappear pretty quickly because their best young players will be in line for massive raises very shortly.
Nurse and Trouba will be in their mid-30s by the end of this decade and will still be on the books just as the Sharks’ young core is ascending and becoming more expensive. Right as that Cup window should theoretically be opening, Nurse’s deal could be troublesome.
From Edmonton’s perspective, it’s a major win to get out of Nurse’s full contract without any retention. Mukhamadullin could turn into a decent third-pair defenseman, but the bigger question is how the Oilers will deploy these cap savings, as they still have more than $10 million remaining even after the reported Ryan Shea signing. If they hit on one or two impact players, it will make an already smart cap dump look even better.
Sharks grade: C
Oilers grade: A-
Corey Pronman: Nurse is paid a bit too much money and isn’t the player he once was, but he’s still a solid No. 3 or No. 4 defenseman. He’s a huge and highly mobile defenseman who is very physical and can make a lot of stops. His puck play is frustrating. He has decent enough touch and sense, but he can make a lot of mistakes with the puck and he’s at his best when he’s not asked to do too much and can embrace his unique profile.
Mukhamadullin is a mobile, tall defenseman who can make a pass and is quite effective at moving pucks up ice. He has length, but he’s not overly hard to play against, relying on his reach and feet to break up plays. He projects out long-term as a No. 4 or No. 5 type of defender.
Sharp had a nice year in college at Western Michigan. He’s quite mobile and is a good college defender, but his puck play and IQ are average at best and he projects to be below-average with the puck at the next level. He’s probably an AHLer.
San Jose takes on a tough deal, but they get the best player in the deal at a position they need and add veterans to a very young team. Edmonton, which is trying to win, is a worse team today even if its cap situation is better.
Sharks grade: B+
Oilers grade: B-
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Tagged To: Darnell NurseNHLEdmonton OilersSan Jose SharksMeet Melat Kiros, the Ethiopian-born anti-Israel socialist crusader who is DSA’s rising star after stunning upset in Colorado
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Politics
Meet Melat Kiros, the Ethiopian-born anti-Israel socialist crusader who is DSA’s rising star after stunning upset in Colorado
By Ryan King Published July 1, 2026, 2:06 p.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on GoogleWASHINGTON — Democratic socialism is spreading West.
Political newcomer Melat Kiros, 29, who took down 15-term Democratic incumbent Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Col.) in a stunning primary upset Tuesday, is riding a wave of anti-Israel and anti-ICE sentiment sweeping her party.
The Ethiopian-born PhD student has pushed to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), suggested that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks were “inevitable,” downplayed suggestions that a firebombing of a Jewish rally was an act of antisemitism, and more.
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Once in the House of Representatives, which is considered likely because she’s in a safe blue district, Kiros has vowed to push Democrats as far left as possible and to oppose Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) becoming speaker.
Political awakening
Kiros refined many of her far-left views in law school at Notre Dame in the early 2020s, a period she describes as her political awakening, as the country was roiled by the COVID-19 pandemic and peak wokeness.
“I literally watched the Federalist Society handpicking some of my classmates onto the judge track in their decades-long bid to pack the courts,” she complained, according to Vox. “…I just lost faith in the system; I think a lot of young people did.”
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After law school in 2022, she joined the law firm Sidley Austin in New York, where she worked as a regulatory and enforcement associate. The following year, she was fired for writing a viral open letter lambasting law firms for pushing to crack down on antisemitism on college campuses.
“By chilling future lawyers’ employment prospects for criticism of the Israeli government’s actions and its legitimacy, you are complicit in Israel’s weaponization of anti-Semitism against legitimate concerns for the right of self-determination and the livelihood of the Palestinian people,” she wrote in the missive.
Sidley Austin demanded she take the letter down, but Kiros claims she refused and was fired as a result.
“I didn’t flinch because I stood by every word and I always will,” she boasted during her victory speech Tuesday.
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That move drew headlines and boosted her name recognition in lefty circles.
After losing her law gig, Kiros moved back to Colorado, where her family had immigrated while she was just 11-months-old. Her father had been picked in America’s Diversity Visa Lottery, per her campaign website.
Back home, she enrolled in a PhD program in public policy and worked as a barista.
Then, in the middle of last year, she decided to launch a seemingly long-shot primary challenge against DeGette, who is widely considered to be a very progressive lawmaker and has served in Congress longer than Kiros has been alive.
DeGette had the backing of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
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But Kiros’ candidacy caught fire with the DSA and other lefty groups that were hunting for candidates to take on incumbent Democrats and push the party further leftwards.
One of the major differences between the two was Kiros’ tougher stance against Israel. DeGette faced grassroots pushback for supporting defensive aid to Israel.
Kiros, however, made tough talk against the Jewish state a feature of her campaign.
For example, she told notorious lefty streamer Hasan Piker that the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack was an “inevitable consequence of apartheid,” though she later clarified she wasn’t trying to say it was justified.
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Piker is a very controversial streamer, having declared that “America deserved 9/11″ and praised the “brave mujahideen” who injured Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).
In a similar vein, she told 9News journalist Kyle Clark that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were an “inevitable consequence” of US foreign policy.
Kiros has stirred local controversy for downplaying the role of antisemitism in the June 1, 2025, firebombing attack at a weekly Jewish gathering aimed at bringing attention to the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. One person was killed and a dozen were injured in that attack.
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The attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, screamed “Free Palestine” before later stating that he “wanted to kill all Zionist people,” according to the FBI.
Kiros repeatedly declined to call it antisemitism and told NOTUS that it wasn’t “entirely obvious that it was just motivated by antisemitism.”
Many of her positions are similar to those of other DSA members, including support for Medicare for All, a modified Green New Deal, and mass amnesty. Kiros also wants a 10% slash in Pentagon spending.
“People are seeing that capitalism is responsible for a lot of the degradation that we’re seeing in our economy, that we’re seeing in our democracy, that we’re certainly seeing in our climate as well,” she claimed in a recent interview.
“They’re demanding a new way to organize our economy.”
Should she win in November, she will be the first Gen. Z woman to serve in Congress and the second Zoomer overall, after Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.)
She is riding a socialist revolt within the Democratic Party, as far-left candidates have won primaries across New York, Maine, Illinois, and elsewhere heading into the midterms.
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