EDMONTON — It’s time, Evan Bouchard.
Time to become a pro. Time to grow up.
Most Oilers fans loved Bouchard’s performance Saturday against the Toronto Maple Leafs, where he had a goal and an assist, played 27:05 and helped the Oilers take a serious run at the Leafs after falling behind 3-0.
There was, however, a faction that watched that opening period — where the Leafs built a 3-0 lead that was fuelled partly by some sketchy Bouchard turnovers and mishandles — and thought, “How can such a good player make those plays?”
One of those folks… Well, you might have heard of him.
“I talk to Bouch a lot. Give him his space a lot of times, too. But we did speak (Sunday) about his game,” revealed Paul Coffey. “He nailed it bang on: Didn’t have a great first, but had a big second and third.”
Let the record show that the Oilers lost that game in the opening period. That they were vastly better than Toronto over the final 40 minutes means little.
Or where the standings are concerned, nothing.
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Over the years, offensive savants Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl have been asked to lock down their games — to grow up into true professionals — and they have responded.
The days of McDavid “not being able to carry Sidney Crosby’s hockey bag defensively” are long in the past. He can play a 200-foot game and be a league-leading points producer simultaneously, while Draisaitl’s ability to dominate a game at both ends of the ice is on display every spring, and on most nights during the season.
Today, at age 25, it is Evan Bouchard’s time to grow up.
To be as attentive in making the easy plays in his own end as he is making a fantastic pass to set up a goal at the other end.
It’s time to be good all the time, not just most of the time.
Time to be a pro.
“It’s on him,” Coffey said. “Because there are times he does it to perfection, and I will tell him when he comes off the ice, ‘You’re as good as anybody when you play like that. Anybody in the league.’
“Look at last year in the playoffs, he was off the charts. He was playing like he should play. Now, he’s getting shots blocked. He knows it. I’m not telling you anything new. It’s because he’s not moving his feet.”
The technical part, Coffey says, is that Bouchard tends to stand still too much. No movement means shooting lanes stay closed, breakout passes become more predictable, and the threat of the puck being skated out of the zone disappears.
“Evan does have it all, but he gets himself in trouble when he stands still. Makes passes standing still. Once he gets moving, he’s as good as anybody out there,” Coffey says.
Bouchard has played 317 NHL games, 53 more in the playoffs, and four of the fabulous rounds last spring that a defenceman can play, setting a new NHL record with 26 post-season assists.
He became a genuine No. 1 defenceman last spring, outplaying and outproducing Quinn Hughes in Round 2. We lauded Bouchard’s play here last spring.
Now, we’re 52 games into a new season, and Bouchard is inconsistent enough that — not only was he not named to Canada’s team at the Four Nations Face-Off — this prodigal talent is not even being considered as a fill-in with Alex Pietrangelo pulling out.
If analytics picked Team Canada, Bouchard might be the captain. But with some of the top evaluators in our sport in charge, Bouchard’s name isn’t even being speculated as a fill-in.
Coffey looks back at last year’s playoff run the way we all do. There, the wayward breakout passes, the soft giveaways, the distracted inattentiveness — they were nonexistent.
Bouchard was dialled into from the first shift to the last — at both ends of the rink. Most notable was Game 7 at Vancouver, the final shift, Edmonton clinging to a 3-2 lead, the Canucks’ goalie on the bench:
“I looked at him on that bench, and I said, ‘You’ve got this,’” Coffey recalled. “I knew, once he gets that puck on the stick, nobody’s going to make a better play than him. Nobody’s going to make a cooler play than him. But I challenged him. I said, ‘You’ve (bleep)ing got this?’ He goes, ‘Yeah!’”
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This is how slim the margins are, for a team looking to find two goals and one more win in a 107-game season, the way Edmonton is this season.
You will not win a Stanley Cup if a key performer like Bouchard takes a step back. In fact, you may not win unless he takes a step forward, the way Darnell Nurse has.
Today, Bouchard owns the best shot attempt differential in the NHL (381). Corsi, Fenwick, goals for percentage, expected goals for… He’s top 10 in all of them (among high-minute defencemen) and ranks first in shot attempts at 145 kph (90 mph) or more.
Nobody in the NHL shoots as hard as often as Bouchard does.
Yet, somehow, Bouchard doesn’t have a power-play goal this season.
It is time for this young player to start playing like an equal with McDavid and Draisaitl. Start being the power play, when the moment requires it, as opposed to just running the power play from the top of the umbrella.
Time to take charge.
“They’ll respect you for that,” said Coffey. “I always say to Bouch, ‘If you get the puck from Connor, he doesn’t want it back. He gives it to you to gain territory, or to do something with it. If you just give it back to him in the same spot, we’ve accomplished nothing.’
“He’s growing, and he’s only going to get better,” Coffey said of his protégé. “Once he figures it out between his ears, he’ll be even better.”
The time has come for Bouchard to “figure it out.”
The time has come to lead, not to follow.
