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The bubble started to burst for Nilsson that night against the Rangers, but at the other end of the ice Taylor Hall and Leon Draisaitl were laying waste to New York’s vaunted defence and goaltendin.

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His rookie season has been a mixed bag. The physical skills are undeniable; this is a player who can land a punishing hit in the defensive zone and a moment later rush the puck up ice and trigger a shot on the opposing goalie. He plays the game with the kind of nasty edge that Sheldon Souray and Chris Pronger did; this is a player who doesn’t hesitate to mistreat the opposition.

On the other hand, the results have been lacking. For all his impressive skill carrying the puck and willingness to jump in the play Nurse has just eight points on the year; his scoring rate of 0.22 points/hour at five-on-five is 33 percent less than stay-at-home rearguard Mark Fayne. No defenceman on the team has worse shot metrics; up-and-down Griffin Reinhart’s Fenwick rating eclipses Nurse’s by a whole percentage point.

Compounding matters is Nurse’s age. He just turned 21 in February; he is in his first professional season. Any analyst hoping to project him faces a dilemma: Does Nurse’s impressive set of physical skills matter more when forecasting his future, or does his underwhelming performance indicate a player destined to disappoint?

It’s a difficult question to answer, and I’ve wrestled with it for most of the season. To try and find the answer, I decided to see how defencemen the same age had performed over the past few years. I restricted my initial list of comparables to players who in their Draft+3 season a) played at least 40 games, b) were still Calder eligible, c) spent significant time on the penalty kill and d) did not dramatically outperform Nurse offensively. I had to also limit myself to the advanced stats era, running from 2007-08 to the present.