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Take a look at the feature image atop this post and you’d be forgiven for thinking it was taken last week, or maybe last month.
Bouchard was 18 when it was captured, not that one could easily tell. He could easily pass, even then, as a man in his late 20s if not early 30s. There’s a reason he has long been known in certain corners of the fan base as “Old Man Bouchard”: a young man with an old soul.
As for Coffey, he was chipping in as a “guest coach” or “on-ice legend” or some such role. The idea of him becoming an actual bench coach with the squad was not yet a gleam in Daryl Katz’s eyes.
Fast forward to today, and the two are again teaming up in a mentor/disciple relationship. Except Bouchard is no longer “just” a young(ish) hot shot with a bright future in hockey, but a proven NHLer who is emerging as a full-blown star. He’s been coming on for quite a while, but since the hiring of head coach Kris Knoblauch along with Coffey on Nov 12 he’s taken his considerable offensive game to a new level.
Indeed, after being held scoreless in the new staff’s debut, Bouchard has found the scoresheet in every game since. He’s now riding a 13-game point streak, second longest ever for an Oilers d-man behind only Paul Coffey himself.
In fact, a few short days ago Coffey had the 10 longest such streaks in Oilers history. Now he has 10 of the top 11… and he’s coached the other one in his first month on the job.
Coffey’s astonishing 28-game heater from his spectacular 1985-86 campaign is surely beyond reach; indeed, it’s the league record by some distance with no other d-man ever reaching as many as 20 games. Ray Bourque made it to 19 in his best run; Bobby Orr to 18. Nobody else came within 10 games.
Bouchard’s own streak is the third longest among active NHL d-men; only Shayne Gostisbehere’s 15-gamer in 2015-16 and Erik Karlsson’s 14-game run last season are longer, with both squarely in his sights. As it stands, Bouch is getting hotter; after scoring 10 points over the streak’s first 8 games, he’s needed only 5 more contests to add another 10, with multi-point efforts in 4 of those 5.
With this hot roll it seems that finally Old Man Bouchard is garnering attention on the league stage. On Friday he was named the NHLPA’s Player of the Week, and for good reason/s:
The rise of Evan Almighty
Bouchard has been ramping up the offensive production for some time now, and continues to up the ante. We’ll focus here primarily on his specialty, offence, recognizing that his defensive game is a work in progress… and that progress is in fact being made.
After one COVID-shortened season developing with Bakersfield Condors, Bouchard took his talents to Sweden during the pandemic-disrupted 2020-21 campaign, playing for Sodertalje SK of HockeyAllsvenskan. When he returned to North America that winter, age 21, he came directly to Edmonton where he has remained. He got into just 14 of Edmonton’s 56 games that season, spending plenty of time in the press box and/or on the offficial taxi squad, but never once got sent out.
Starting in 2021-22 he became a full-time Oiler, and immediately began to produce at the impressive rate of a point every other game. He missed just a single game that season (81 GP, 10-33-43, +10) and none at all the following campaign (82 GP, 8-32-40, +6). After thriving alongside veteran partner Duncan Keith in the first of those two seasons, Bouchard struggled to find his groove in 2022-23 right up to the trade deadline. That’s when the Oilers made the blockbuster trade that sent veteran right-shot offensive blueliner Tyson Barrie along with the equivalent of two first-round draft picks to Nashville for another vet, left-shot two-way rearguard Mattias Ekholm, who was immediately paired with Bouchard in a top-four role.
That was the turning point. Not only did the trade land something resembling the perfect partner for offensively gifted younger man, it also cleared Barrie from the scene entirely. Into Tyson’s old spot on the Oilers’ devastating first powerplay unit stepped Bouchard, and the record-breaking unit kept right on scoring.
Fair to say that Oilers GM Ken Holland had a few objectives in mind when he pulled the trigger on the Ekholm deal, but if he had a single priority to “maximize Evan Bouchard” he could scarcely have done better.
To the younger man’s credit, he has responded. Let’s check out his performance since the start of last season, over which time he has played 121 regular season and playoff games. First we’ll divide it into two nearly equal splits from before and after the Ekholm trade:
Wowsa, look at that! Everything changed.
Before the trade, Bouchard was playing primarily third-pairing minutes with second-unit powerplay time. He was garnering about a point every third game, with some 75% of his production at even strength. (1 shorthanded point is not shown in the splits.) At the time of the trade his 21 points ranked third among Oilers d-men, far behind Barrie’s 43 and Darnell Nurse‘s 31.
Since Ekholm’s arrival — and need I remind, Barrie’s departure — Bouch has seen his ice time bump up by nearly 25%, over 4 minutes per game, ripping past the 20-minute threshold that typically defines a top-four. His point production, meanwhile, has soared off the charts, more than tripling to 1.13 per game which ranks him among the very elites of the position. His even-strength production has doubled in terms of raw numbers, while shrinking to just 43% of his total output.
Let’s dig a little deeper to what has happened just since the trade, sub-dividing those 60 games into four unequal sections: the last quarter of last season, the playoffs, the first 13 games this season under Jay Woodcroft and Dave Manson, and the last 14 under Knoblauch and Coffey.
Wowsa, again!
- Throughout this entire span, Bouchard’s workload has continued to creep up.
- He soared to 0.9 P/GP down the stretch, his 19 points 5 clear of any other Oilers blueliner.
- He then erupted for 17 points in just 12 playoff games, doing nearly all of that damage on Edmonton’s relentless powerplay. This time he was 5 points clear of any other d-man in the entire NHL, this despite playing just two playoff rounds. His 15 powerplay points led the entire league, forward or defence.
- In the opening month he scored at an equivalent level as last season’s stretch drive, his 12 points fully triple the number of any teammate on the back end.
- Since the coaching change, a whopping 20 points in just 14 games for a staggering average of 1.43 per game. That’s 14 more points than any defensive teammate, and indeed ranks second in the entire NHL over that specific span, a single point behind the great Cale Makar.
Indeed, as was the case in the playoffs, Bouchard’s competition cannot be found within his own team but in the NHL writ large. And there are precious few who can keep up with him. Here are the top 10-scoring blueliners in the league through games of Dec 15:
Wowsa, yet a third time. Cureently Evan Bouchard ranks:
- 2nd* (where * = tied) among NHL defencemen in goals
- 4th* in assists
- 3rd in points
- 3rd in points per game
- 7th* in even-strength points
- 1st* in powerplay points
- 3rd* in shots
- 3rd in shooting percentage (min 50 shots)
- Oh yeah, 47th in ATOI
That last category suggests he’s still working his way up the ranks. He’s among the youngest players on the list, in a virtual tie with no fewer than three fellow members of the fantastic draft class of 2018 (Rasmus Dahlin, 1st overall; Quinn Hughes, 7th; Noah Dobson 12th). All were 23 at the start of the current season. Worth noting that Evan’s 211 NHL games are by far the fewest among those shown; Dobson is closest with 266.
His underlying numbers are strong, both at even strength and on the powerplay. In 2023-24 his 5v5 shot share of exactly 60% ranks 2nd in the NHL, a couple tenths of a percent behind his own partner, Ekholm. He also ranks 2nd behind the bearded Viking in scoring chance share at 62%; 1st in high danger chances at 63%; and 1st in expected goals at 64%. Only in real goals does he lag at a lowly 48%, a combination of not-great goaltending behind him to this point coupled with his own propensity to make the occasional ten-bell clanger.
Worth noting, however, that this same player ran a 67.5% goal share after the arrival of Ekholm in 2022-23. The pair’s luck ran hot in last season’s final quarter, not so much in the opening third of the current slate. By way of reference, Bouchard’s PDO was a sizzling 1.069 in the first part of that equation, a poor .971 in the second. In the fullness of time, one would expect him to land somewhere in the middle.
Contract situation
Bouchard’s entry-level contract expired at the end of last season, and it took some haggling well into August before he signed a two-year extension at a very reasonable $3.9 million per. He’s currently outperforming that figure massively; according to the model of Dom Luczczyszyn and Shayna Goldman of The Athletic, he’s playing at a $12.5 million (!!) level for a surplus value of $8.6 million.
- Source (paywall warning)
Give Holland some credit here; he waited until literally the last minute before giving Bouchard his big promotion at last season’s deadline, limiting the impact of his inevitable rise in powerplay production on his platform season. Some will be quick to add, let’s give Holland some debit for not having the cap space available to sign him long-term, though to be fair the GM has other pressing needs with a club that is trying to contend for the Stanley Cup in the here and now. Such wasn’t an issue when, for example, Peter Chiarelli went deep with Oscar Klefbom in 2015.
For now, Bouchard’s best comparable in terms of contract is the two-year, $3.2 million AAV bridge deal that Nurse signed when his own ELC expired in 2018. That proved to be a value contract with bills that came due later; surely the same can be said about Evan Bouchard’s two-year pact today.
For now the Oilers have 1⅔ years remaining to make hay on that contract, coincidentally the exact same period remaining on Leon Draisaitl‘s own bargain deal which establishes to a certain degree the Oilers’ window for a run at the Cup. That’s good timing in one sense, though it will surely mean the summer of 2025 will cause a few headaches for whoever is in charge of the Edmonton roster at that time. One crucial distinction: the Oilers will retain RFA rights on Bouchard, even as his current trajectory tells us his next renewal will be a costly one.
For now, though, it’s a heckuva deal. And as is becoming more apparent by the week, Old Man Bouchard is a heckuva hockey player.
