Evan Bouchard skated 17:57 in the Oilers’ regular-season finale Saturday, providing him with a brief tuneup just in case he’s needed during the playoffs.
It also provided him an opportunity to shake off some rust.
The game was just Bouchard’s second since March 1 and his 14th of the year. The prized prospect has had to wait patiently for his chances.
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“It’s tough. Everyone wants to play,” he said earlier this month. “There was a lot of practice time for me, a lot of time to work on what I wanted to work on — specifically my skating. It was good to take advantage of that.”
The Oilers’ handling of Bouchard this season has been a constant cause of consternation among fans and has raised an eyebrow or two around the league as well.
Bouchard is just 21 and was the 10th pick in the draft three years ago. He’s a blueliner known for his elite offensive instincts and skill. Having a young, highly regarded player sit out so often defies general manager Ken Holland’s normal developmental approach.
Of course, there’s a reason the normal tact hasn’t been taken.
The Oilers are one of only two NHL teams to have their AHL affiliate in another country this season — the Canucks are the other — which resulted in logistical nightmares for recalling players. The quarantine timelines, three days in the AHL and two weeks when re-entering Canada (which was reduced to one week at the end of March), made shuffling Bouchard to and from the minors earlier in the season too prohibitive.
“He wasn’t playing here, so (in any other season) I would have sent him down,” Holland said. “It’s easy to look back and say, ‘Would you do something different?’ I don’t think that I would do anything different.”
“The circumstances are way different than any other year,” coach Dave Tippett added.
Having Bouchard north of the border rather than with the Bakersfield Condors allowed him to be available at a moment’s notice in the event of an injury. He has been considered the team’s No. 4 right-handed defenceman and played 10 of his games when Ethan Bear was sidelined with a concussion for most of February.
Holland, Tippett and supporters of their plan believe it was necessary to have Bouchard around. The thought is that benefits like working with skating coach David Pelletier and assistant Brian Wiseman regularly and being around NHL players outweighed the cons of not playing much.
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But not everyone agrees with that assessment.
“You’ve gotta play,” a veteran Western-based NHL scout said. “You can practice all you want. You still need game situations.
“You’re not gonna do the same things in practice that you’re gonna in a game. I don’t care who you are; you’re not gonna bring the same mindset, the same habits, the same approach.”
The Oilers are set to open their first-round playoff series against the Jets on Wednesday. Bouchard is expected to be a Black Ace during the postseason.
Tippett insists he’d be willing to put Bouchard in the lineup if a right-sider gets injured, although he’s not necessarily ready to denote him the first fill-in.
“He’s come far enough where you have confidence putting him in,” Tippett said. “You look at all scenarios, but he’s played well enough to certainly put himself in the conversation.”
The Oilers have tempered trust in Bouchard for playoff spot duty and seemingly full-fledged faith that he’ll be a regular next season. As unconventional and underwhelming as the approach over the past few months has been, there are indications it just might turn out for the best.
Here’s a quick summation of Bouchard’s career as part of the Oilers organization before this season.
He made the team the fall after being drafted and played seven games in October 2018, scoring his first NHL goal before being sent back to OHL London. When his junior career ended, he was summoned by Bakersfield and had eight points in as many playoff games the following spring. He spent last season there and racked up 36 points in 54 games before play was halted because of the pandemic.
Bouchard doesn't just drop bombs 😉 #TheAfterParty #Condorstown pic.twitter.com/sOelsFNpze
— Bakersfield Condors (@Condors) May 14, 2019
Bouchard was part of the Oilers roster as a Black Ace in the playoff bubble last summer. After the Oilers were eliminated and before he left for Sweden in September to compete in the Allsvenskan with Sodertalje, he visited the place he’s been going to for the past decade: The Pond in Burlington, Ont.
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He was put through the paces by Michele and Ryan Moore, siblings who co-own the facility and serve as skating and skills coaches, respectively. Using a 100-by-60-foot ice sheet, they adopt the mantra: confine the space; quicken the pace.
Michele works with Bouchard on his edge work, bursts (first three steps) and lateral movement. She’s trying to get him to be lower to the ice and more explosive with his stride. Ryan helps Bouchard apply the skating techniques toward scenarios he’d use in a game like stopping and closing the gap on a rushing forward or getting in the best position to unleash his lethal point shot.
“With his skill set, and if we can take that those skills to the next level and apply these skating skills, we honestly think the sky’s the limit,” Ryan said.
Ryan believes Bouchard’s vision and patience with the puck and his shot are first-rate, and he’s only trusting himself more. The Moores are seeing progression in Bouchard’s skating, but Ryan notes, “There’s still work to be done.”
They feel as though there are advantages for Bouchard being with the Oilers, even if the situation isn’t without its blemishes. Michele thinks it’s great he’s getting to work closely with Pelletier. Ryan likes that he’s rubbing shoulders with NHLers.
“It’s almost like a glass ceiling,” Ryan said. “He can see the other side. He knows that that skating ability is what separates players in the NHL now.”
However, they’re aware that sitting out isn’t easy. After witnessing the work Bouchard put in during the offseason, Ryan knows how disappointing it’s been for him not to play much in the NHL in 2021. He checks in with Bouchard every couple of weeks to see how he’s managing and to try to lift his spirits.
“As a former (junior and Canadian university) player, and one that didn’t always get in the lineup, I know you’re working your ass off and there’s no real reward. I know how mentally draining that is,” Ryan said.
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“He wants to be in the lineup. I can tell that that hunger is there. There’s only so much day-after-day skating that your mind can take.”
Former NHL defenceman Carlo Colaiacovo has a good understanding of what Bouchard is going through.
Drafted 17th by the Maple Leafs in 2001, Colaiacovo spent the start of the 2002-03 season with the Leafs and playing time was hard to come by on a veteran team. As when Bouchard got his first NHL taste, Colaiacovo was 19 when he got into two games near the end of October before he was sent back to the OHL.
“Learning how to be an NHL player; learning how to practice; learning how to take care of yourself; learning how other guys practice — those are the things that you really have to pay attention to,” he said. “There’s not much you can do as a young player to control the games that you’re playing and the game that you’re not playing.”
Colaiacovo spent the next few seasons shuffling between the Leafs and the minors before he was eventually dealt to the Blues in November 2008. He retired from pro hockey in 2018 after 470 NHL games, capped by a two-year stint in the German league.
Colaiacovo skated at a skills camp Bouchard was attending in Toronto in August 2019 and remembers being impressed.
“I was blown away with the intelligence, with the skill level,” Colaiacovo said. “It reminded me a lot of my early years with Alex Pietrangelo — a right-shot defenceman, really smart hockey IQ, really good with stickhandling the puck and making plays.
“That’s what I see him developing into — now, maybe not quite to the same extent as Alex Pietrangelo.”
Though there are some similarities between his first couple of seasons and Bouchard’s, Colaiacovo again references Pietrangelo to illustrate how some young blueliners need time to develop.
Pietrangelo started each of his first two seasons with the Blues after being selected fourth in 2008, only to be demoted to junior both times. Pietrangelo was furious when it happened the second year and called his veteran teammate to vent. Colaiacovo calmed him down, telling him not being in the NHL immediately full time was probably for the best.
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“He went through the exact same thing that Evan Bouchard is going through — and it was difficult,” Colaiacovo said. “It was hard for him to absorb in the beginning because he just wanted to play.”
“Look at where his development has taken him now.”
Pietrangelo used his half-season in the OHL after the World Juniors to help vault him to an NHL spot the next fall. He played 22 minutes per game in his first full season and has been one of the league’s best defencemen for more than a decade now.
The difference between Pietrangelo and Bouchard is the former at least was playing somewhere when he wasn’t in the NHL.
While Bouchard waits, focusing on improving during on-ice workouts and pushing himself in the gym are musts. These are things players don’t always have time or energy to do if they’re playing all the time.
“This is a great opportunity for a guy like Evan Bouchard to sort of sit back and focus on those same intangibles,” Colaiacovo said.
Oilers’ Evan Bouchard gets in some post-practice edge work under the watchful eye of David Pelletier. pic.twitter.com/zPviXBreo7
— Daniel Nugent-Bowman (@DNBsports) April 15, 2021
Now a radio host in Toronto for TSN 1050, Colaiacovo suggests the Maple Leafs’ Justin Holl is someone Bouchard can look at optimistically. Holl is now in a top-four role after spending the 2018-19 season in exile, playing just 11 games under Mike Babcock.
However, Holl is almost eight years older than Bouchard, proving no two situations are exactly alike. And it’s challenging to come up with the perfect recent comparison for Bouchard — a model for how a team has integrated a similar young defenceman into the lineup.
When looking at examples this season, perhaps the Oilers could have taken a similar approach to the way the Ducks worked in 2020 first-rounder Jamie Drysdale. He spent the 14 games in the AHL to start the year before getting called up to the big club and appeared in 18 of Anaheim’s final 26 games. The Ducks worked the right-shot blueliner in on the left side, too.
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A key difference — aside from the lack of a lengthy quarantine — is the Ducks finished second to last in the NHL, whereas the Oilers were 11th overall and second in their division.
“He’s stuck in a situation right now where there’s a lot of things going on good in Edmonton,” Colaiacovo said. “They’re a team that’s serious about making a playoff push. He just has to bide his time.”
Maybe a more appropriate example, from last season, is the Islanders’ Noah Dobson, who was drafted two spots behind Bouchard in 2018.
Dobson was ineligible to play in the AHL in 2019-20 and had to remain on the NHL roster or be sent back to the QMJHL. The Islanders opted to have him learn the ropes in the pros slowly, playing him 11 of their first 38 games. He then played 23 of their last 30 regular-season games after Adam Pelech ruptured his Achilles tendon.
He was a regular in the lineup in 2021, minus an 18-day stay in COVID-19 protocol. The Isles have made the playoffs in each of the last three seasons.
“Looking back, it’s probably going to be the best thing for me moving forward, just coming along slow, learning from the older guys, getting in the games and getting in the conference final was really huge for my confidence going into the offseason,” Dobson said in January.
As with Dobson, I’m hearing the Oilers’ plan is to give Bouchard a clearer path to a regular right-side spot in the lineup next season. (Tyson Barrie is a like-minded offensive defenceman who is reportedly seeking a long-term contract in free agency.)
However, barring some unexpected change in usage during the playoffs, Bouchard will have to try to nab that spot after limited action in the preceding months.
“The work he’s put in this year I think will pay off for him next year when he comes to training camp,” Tippett said.
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Until then, there’s been a lot of waiting and hoping for Bouchard and his supporters.
An industry source questioned the Oilers’ creativity and flexibility in terms of trying to find ways to get Bouchard into more games.
The source suggested the Oilers had several options. They could have used seven defencemen more often — something they did just four times, including Saturday. They could have tried Bouchard on the left side, which they did March 1 before sitting him out for more than two months. (Holland said that’s a big ask on a team with high expectations.) They could have occasionally scratched Bear or even Barrie, whose offensive skill most closely mirrors Bouchard’s — to make room in the lineup.
That didn’t happen.
“You’ve got to take somebody’s job,” Holland said. “We just don’t dole out jobs because you have potential.”
The 23-year-old Bear appeared in every game as a rookie last season, and the coaching staff trusts him as an all-around defender. Barrie wound up leading all NHL defencemen in scoring, thanks in part to quarterbacking the NHL’s top power play, where he racked up 23 of his 48 points.
Add in valued veteran defensive-minded rearguard Adam Larsson, and the right side is crowded.
Determining Bouchard’s playing time — or lack thereof — has been simple for Tippett. He looks at his depth chart and continues to see three players with the same right blade that he likes more than Bouchard right now.
“We’re in the winning business here,” Tippett said. “You play the players you can win with. It’s not that you can’t win with Bouch, but those guys are proven. Every one of them, when they got the opportunity, they played well enough to not look elsewhere.”
“I understand people want to see young players play, but I do everything geared to winning.”
The scout quoted earlier is in full agreement with how the Oilers have determined their depth chart. The scout watched Bouchard play several AHL games last season and noted concerns about his work in the defensive zone.
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This season in the NHL, Bouchard has a 51.9 Corsi for percentage at five-on-five, per Natural Stat Trick. That’s the sixth-highest clip of any Oiler, albeit in just 188 minutes and with the benefit of starting two-thirds of his shifts in the offensive zone. The Oilers have been outscored 8-5 during that time. And just a quarter of his ice time has come against elite competition, according to PuckIQ.
In the scout’s eyes, Bouchard is behind Larsson, Bear and Barrie on the right-side pecking order.
That Bouchard hasn’t gotten much game action anywhere in 2021 is the issue.
“Looking back on it, he probably would have been better off playing the full year in Bakersfield — a full four months of playing 30 minutes a night — just like Ryan McLeod did,” the scout said.
Holland is quick to point out that Bouchard did play 23 games in Sweden before returning to Canada before Christmas. That’s a silver lining, he said.
“Would we have liked him to play more? Yeah,” Holland said. “But that’s not a reflection of Evan. That’s a reflection more of our depth on defence.
“I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it’s been a great year for him, because he hasn’t played a lot. But I think he’s improved as a player.”
There were exploratory discussions between Holland and Bouchard’s agents in early April about whether it made sense for him to go to the AHL for a few games. Once again, the quarantine was deemed too cumbersome. There was potential he could be used in NHL games as well.
“I’m happy I got to stay here and get some practices in and work on my game,” Bouchard said. “I think it’s paying off for me.”
Whether it pays off in the next few weeks, the start of next season or possibly later is still to be determined.
Given the way things have played out during the first few months of the year, delayed gratification seems like the surest outcome.
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“There’s been nothing in his play that we haven’t liked, but we have three right-handed players that have played ahead of him,” Tippett said.
“It’s not that we didn’t want to play him. We have people above him. That’s where he is. We recognize that he’s a really good player. He’s gonna have a great future with our team.”
(Top photo: Curtis Comeau / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
