Evan Bouchard has spent the first four games of the season doing something few defencemen in NHL history have ever done, and still, the conversation around him keeps drifting back to the mistakes.
That’s life in Edmonton when you play the blue line the way Bouchard does. He can look reckless at times.
He can also look unstoppable. Through Wednesday’s 5-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks, he had six goals and 11 points, putting him at the top of the NHL in goals and behind only Connor McDavid in points.
He’s already nearly halfway to last season’s total of 21 goals in just four games.
The numbers get even stranger from there. The last defenceman to score six goals through his first four games was Harry Cameron, who did it with the Toronto Arenas in 1917-18. Bouchard is also only the fifth defenceman in NHL history to pile up at least 10 points in his first four games, joining Bobby Orr, Pat Stapleton and Morgan Rielly.
That’s the kind of company that turns heads, even if Bouchard’s game still comes with the occasional rough edge. Leon Draisaitl made it clear he’s not losing sleep over how the rest of the league sees him.
“It's pretty funny how he's viewed around the league, in my eyes. But people can continue to see it that way, and we'll gladly have him on the ice,” Draisaitl said.
The Oilers, for their part, have plenty of reasons to embrace what Bouchard is giving them. Edmonton has outscored opponents 11-1 at five-on-five, and Bouchard has been right in the middle of the offence while playing more than 25 minutes a night. The Oilers have scored 19 goals in four games, and he’s been a major driver of that attack from the back end.
His production last season was enough to put him in the Norris Trophy conversation, but the voting told a different story. The award is for the league’s best overall defenceman, and Bouchard’s scoring did not outweigh the defensive mistakes in the eyes of voters. He finished fourth behind Zach Werenski, Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes, and he said in May that missing the final ballot bothered him.
“When I saw that come out, I was definitely upset a little bit,” Bouchard said on TSN OverDrive. “Stings a little bit, but you know what? You get back at it, and you forget about it.”
Now he’s opened the next season with a pace that has him leading all three of those names in scoring after four games, which has already sparked talk about whether this could be the year he gets taken seriously for the award. Bouchard hasn’t said that’s what’s driving him, but it wouldn’t be hard to see why the fourth-place finish might have left a mark.
At the same time, nothing about his game has changed enough to erase the risk. If he keeps this pace, the scoring total would be absurd. Eventually, he’ll make a mistake and somebody watching will go right back to asking why Edmonton pays him $10.5 million per season.
That’s part of the package. So is the offence.
And for the people in the Oilers’ dressing room, the tradeoff seems pretty simple. They see the chances he creates, the puck movement he brings, and the kind of impact very few defencemen can make.
Fans can keep waiting for the next error. Right now, Bouchard is giving them a lot more to admire than nitpick.
In Other News...
Oilers May Have Found More Than Depth In This Trade
The Oilers latest swap with Pittsburgh was framed as a depth move on paper, with Spencer Stastney going the other way and Filip Hallander coming back to Edmonton. But the more interesting part of the deal is what Hallander brings beyond simple roster insulation. He is a younger center who has done most of his growing up in the Swedish Hockey League, where his play has stood out enough to earn international attention, and he arrives with a profile that suggests there may be more here than a routine bottom-six addition.
Hallander has also given Edmonton a small but encouraging offensive glimpse in limited NHL usage this season, which only adds to the intrigue around how the Oilers might use him while injuries continue to test their forward depth. Stastneys metrics were solid but unspectacular, so the trade could end up being judged less by what Edmonton gave up than by whether Hallander can translate his strong track record into a larger role. For a team that needs reliable minutes now, the possibility of uncovering a useful center along the way makes the deal worth watching. [Read more 🡒]
Devon Levi Is Giving The Oilers A Real Starter Debate
With Frederik Andersen sidelined, the Oilers have leaned on a goaltending tandem of Devon Levi and Tristan Jarry, and the early returns have made the crease look a lot less settled than it did a few weeks ago. Levi has started three games and has given Edmonton a steady enough presence to keep winning, while Jarry has only had one chance to answer and was left with an overtime loss.
The bigger takeaway for Edmonton is that Levi is quickly turning a short-term necessity into a real conversation about the future. General manager Stan Bowman brought him in from Buffalo with an eye on upside, and the Oilers have reason to like what they are seeing so far, especially with Andersen unavailable and the backup plan still taking shape behind him. [Read more 🡒]
Oilers About To Face A Strange New Reality Against A Familiar Face
A familiar face is about to make the matchup feel a little stranger. Darnell Nurse will see the Oilers from the opposite bench for the first time after spending the first stretch of his NHL career in Edmonton, a run that made him one of the most recognizable players in the room and around the organization. Even with the change of scenery, the matchup still carries the kind of layered emotion that comes with facing a team a player knows as well as Nurse knows this one.
The timing adds another wrinkle for Edmonton, where the game will also come with a quiet shift in the franchise record book. Nurse has been part of so many Oilers milestones over the years, but this meeting creates a new one in the background as Connor McDavid moves past him on the clubs all-time games played list. It is the sort of detail that underscores how much history has already been built, and how quickly a new chapter can alter the old one. [Read more 🡒]