Darnell Nurse day-to-day after Zadorov fight

It started late in a 6-3 loss to Boston on Tuesday, with Zadorov rocking Logan Marchment's world in the second period and Nurse deciding somebody had to answer for it.

Nurse giving up height to Zadorov isn't the scary part. Everyone is giving up height to Zadorov. The scary part is how it ended.

Nurse went straight down the tunnel and never came back. He missed the rest of the third, and after the game Ryan Warsofsky had nothing to share. For a blue line that leans on Nurse for minutes and for bite, a fight in a game they were already losing went from a nice show of loyalty to a real problem pretty quickly.

By Thursday morning in Nashville things looked better. Nurse was a full participant at morning skate and Warsofsky called him a true game-time decision. Then he didn't come out for warm-ups, and the lines told the rest of the story.

So Nolan Allan came back in and Luca Cagnoni slid into the lineup, and Alex Nedeljkovic got the net. The injury is listed as upper body, and the early read was that it wasn't his head.

If it's the hand, that's the best version of this news. A sore hand is a lot easier to play through than a head that just bounced off the ice, and it fits with a guy who could skate that morning but couldn't go that night.

The Sharks got through it anyway, in very Sharks fashion. Nedeljkovic made 32 saves, Steven Stamkos tied it 2-2 with 1 second left in regulation, and Macklin Celebrini scored the only goal of the shootout to get San Jose to 4-3-0. Without Nurse, Sam Dickinson led the team with a career-high 24:39, and Warsofsky said afterward that he'd earned it.

Friday is where it stands now. Nurse was a full participant at practice, he's still day-to-day, and Warsofsky says he's probably a game-time decision again Saturday in Detroit. Whenever he's back, the question is whether Dickinson keeps those minutes. After 4 strong games in a row from a kid who opened the season as a healthy scratch, he's making it hard to send him back down the depth chart.