I know Nurse hasn't been playing great either, but the with/without stats show that Ceci has been a drag on Nurse all year, and the drag is REALLY bad statistically.
In the playoffs, albeit with somewhat small sample size, Nurse is 24% better at xGF% without Ceci than with Ceci. Nurse is 34% with Ceci and 58% without Ceci. Ceci is also better without Nurse, but not nearly as much, with the same 34% with Nurse and 43% without Nurse. So Nurse is 15% better when you compare each without the other.
In the regular season the stats show a similar result. Nurse and Ceci were xGF% of 53%. Nurse without Ceci was 56% and Ceci without Nurse was 52% (so Ceci actually went down a little without Nurse in regular season). It is VERY clear that Ceci is dragging that pairing down, and by quite a bit.
The real interesting thing is when you insert Stecher into the mix with Nurse. Their xGF% together (again in limited minutes of course) is 59% in the regular season. So better than the Nurse/Ceci pairing by 6%.
It is somewhat crazy to me, that with Ceci being, by far, the worst defender on the team so far, in both +/- at -7 and all the advanced stats (lowest D xGF5, lowest D SCF%, and 2nd lowest D HDCF%), and with Stecher having some success with Nurse in the regular season, that the coach hasn't brought Stecher in for a game. It almost literally can't get worse, so what is the hold up? Makes no sense whatsoever.