Darnell Nurse’s bounce-back Game 4 was huge for the Oilers

In a game that the Edmonton Oilers, one of their top blueliners put forth a redeeming performance.

Following what many believe was his worst game of the playoffs, defenseman Darnell Nurse was able to shake off an early miscue in Game 4 of the Western Conference final, and play a key role in Edmonton’s 5-2 victory over the Dallas Stars, evening the series at two games apiece.

The 29-year-old might not have had the bulk of the minutes on Wednesday night, as Kris Knoblauch gave Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm the deserved top-pair minutes, but Nurse managed to be productive in his 19:19 of ice time. He picked up his third assist of the playoffs on the Ryan McLeod goal that started the comeback for the Oilers, registered a shot on net, and led all skaters with 11 hits.

On Thursday’s edition of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk talk about the importance of the bounce-back performance from Nurse.

Frank Seravalli: Huge. Tough start, a puck in off the ass, your dash-two in the first five minutes, and I love what Corey Perry said — it was super quiet in that arena — and he looked up and down the bench and said, “We’re fine”…Nurse played a big role in that [comeback] because he was engaged. The 11 hits that he threw were more than the seven previous games combined, and you just had a feeling watching that media scrum, after he was rigged through the coals for 24 hours, his reaction wasn’t mean-spirited at all. It was more like, “That’s what you think of my game? I’m going to show you guys.” I love that. That’s how I view these playoffs in general. You can either be scared and think, “We’re going to go down 3-1,” or you can be like, “Nope, we’re grabbing this, it’s going to be 2-2.”

You can watch the full segment, and entire episode here…