Huge update on injured Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse.

The Edmonton Oilers have received some very good news, perhaps some of the best news they've gotten all season.

On Sunday in an official announcement via the Edmonton Oilers social media platforms, the team announced that veteran defenseman Darnell Nurse has returned. Nurse has been officially activated off of injured reserve but even more importantly than that, the Oilers have announced that he is healthy and ready to go effective immediately.

This means that Nurse will be in the lineup on Sunday night when the Oilers face off against the Los Angeles Kings later this evening, in Edmonton. 

Nurse missed significant time this season after he suffered a broken finger back in the month of November. The injury occurred during a matchup against the Winnipeg Jets, and in the end we now know that it has cost him 6 games on the schedule.

It would be an understatement to suggest that Nurse is among the team's most important players, especially considering the kind of role he was taking on early in the campaign. Nurse was not only one of the Oilers top pairing blue liners, but he was chewing up a staggering 26:06 of ice time on average through his first 16 games of the season. He also had no goals and 11 assists for 11 points over those 16 games and was a plus minus of +4 of the season prior to the injury.

It may be somewhat unreasonable to expect Nurse to jump right back to that level of form after an extended layoff, but the good news here is that a broken finger likely did not stop him from training during his recovery period. Add to that the fact that Nurse was out for a relatively short period of time, and there's a good chance that he will get back into the groove of things relatively quickly.

The good news for the Oilers is that they managed to go a very respectable 4-2-0 in spite of Nurse's absence over those 6 games, a good sign for a team that will now be moving forward with Nurse back in the lineup.