Evan Bouchard spent the summer being told what he is bad at. He led every defenseman in the NHL in scoring last season, and in Edmonton that was somehow the second thing anybody wanted to talk about.
At camp on Monday, his captain decided to handle it.
“He’s a special, special player. He’s asked to do everything,” Connor McDavid told reporters after practice. “He plays big minutes, plays on the penalty kill, five-on-five, the power play … he’s a leader in that room.”
Then the line that will follow the season around: “Everyone wants to comment on the boo-boos, but he makes a thousand great plays.”
What is the criticism of Evan Bouchard?
That he gives one back for every two he creates. The pinch that doesn’t come off, the stretch pass into the wrong sweater, the shift that ends in his own net — those are the clips that circulate, and a team that has lost two Stanley Cup Finals and then a first round has an audience primed to treat every defensive mistake as the reason.
The rest of the record is harder to argue with. Bouchard played all 82 games, scored 21 goals and finished with 95 points, more than any defenseman in the league. His 74 assists were third in the entire NHL at any position, behind McDavid and Nikita Kucherov.
He was not a Norris Trophy finalist. The three named in May were Zach Werenski with 81 points, Cale Makar with 79 and Rasmus Dahlin with 74. Werenski won it. Bouchard, the man who outscored all three, was a footnote in the league’s own release, noted only for having the best points-per-game rate among defensemen at 1.16.
We had him fourth on our list of the league’s best defensemen this season, and the reason was not the points. Edmonton was a plus-20 team with him on the ice, behind the weakest goaltending of anyone in that top 20.
Bouchard’s own answer is shorter
He is not arguing.
“Keeping the puck out of the net when I’m out there,” he said when asked what he is working on. “I think the offence will come, but most importantly focus on the defensive side of things first.”
He was specific about the fix, too. “I think a lot of it’s not letting those mistakes pile up. Making the simple play, not always going for the home run play.” And then, carefully: “I think I was caught doing that quite a bit last year, so I think if I cannot dumb it down, but simplify it a little bit, it’ll help things.”
The job just got bigger
Bouchard also has to absorb the loss of Darnell Nurse, and he did not pretend otherwise.
“It’s definitely going to be a hard piece to fill with Darnell. He’s got the whole package,” he said. “He’s big, he can skate, he’s a leader in the room, he’s vocal in the room. That’s hard to come by.”
So the assignment for a defenseman who turns 27 next month and just led the league’s blueliners in scoring is: cover more, gamble less, replace a departed teammate’s minutes, and do it for a coach hired to make Edmonton harder to play against.
McDavid, who has been the captain here since 2016, sounded like a man who has watched this discourse for long enough.
“It’s the little details that people miss,” he said. “He’s a great player and we’re lucky to have him here.”
The season starts soon enough, and the first bad pinch will bring all of it back — here is how to watch it.
