For the fourth year in a row, the Edmonton Oilers’ top defensive pair, featuring Mattias Ekholm and Evan Bouchard, has been a dominant force.

Since the Olympic break, the Oilers are plus-six in goals and plus-17 in shots when at least one of them is on the ice at five-on-five. They’ve even outscored the opposition in their minutes without Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl.

The trouble begins for the Oilers when their trusted duo heads to the bench. Without them, Edmonton has been outscored 23-14 and thoroughly outchanced over the past month. It’s a luxury to have two defencemen who tilt the ice so heavily while playing almost half the game, but it’s nearly impossible to win the Stanley Cup with only one reliable pair. There isn’t much time for the team to find answers to its defensive depth, but can they do it? Let’s take a look. 

The second pair

Connor Murphy is the latest in a revolving door of Darnell Nurse partners this season. For the first half of the year, Nurse played most of his minutes with either Alec Regula or Jake Walman, and both duos failed to churn out positive results.

Next up was Ty Emberson, who achieved a 50 per cent expected goal share with Nurse, but a minus-three on the scoresheet. While Emberson defends well in his own end, he and Nurse both rank in the bottom one per cent of the league in entry chance prevention, according to All Three Zones’ microstat tracking. Their transition defence was too leaky to be sustainable, especially given their lack of puck-moving ability.

That brings us to the latest attempt at a usable second pair: the Nurse-Murphy duo. Early returns suggest this might be the most functional pairing yet. Murphy excels as a net-front defender and cycle-breaker, and he suppresses entry chances far more effectively than Emberson. He........

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