NEW YORK — Evan Bouchard had arguably one of the worst games of his NHL career in the Edmonton Oilers’ loss at the New York Islanders on Thursday night.
Mistakes he made led directly to two goals against, and he had several more giveaways and blunders that led to quality scoring chances.
“I’m going to have to improve on that,” Bouchard said. “You learn from it – obviously a lot of learning. Yeah, part of the game is forget good and bad, so move on, be ready next game.”
Bouchard is the fourth-highest paid defenseman in the NHL and tied for 14th among all players at a salary cap hit of $10.5 million, and he’s well worth that price when he’s creating more offense for his team than opponents. His 72 points over past three playoffs are 40 more than the next-closest player at the position.
“I know people can be hard on him for the mistakes, but you’ve also got to look at the upside of what he brings,” defense partner Mattias Ekholm said. “I’m sure he knows that he could’ve made some other decisions tonight, but I know that there’s other games and you saw the other night when he’s just pulling through their forward and just makes everybody look silly and things that I wouldn’t even think of. I’d be careful criticizing him because that’s who he is.”
Bouchard had the puck on his stick in the neutral zone late in the first period under little pressure and inexplicably had it stolen away by Mat Barzal, who broke in on Stuart Skinner to score his first goal since January.
“Just a bad play on my end,” Bouchard said.
Late in the second with Edmonton on the power play, Bouchard was in no-man’s land when Bo Horvat got behind him and scored short-handed.
“I thought I’d be able to keep it in if (Islanders penalty-killer Jean-Gabriel Pageau) chipped it up the wall,” Bouchard said. “Obviously, he didn’t do that.”
On the ESPN+ broadcast of the game, color analyst Ray Ferraro, a longtime forward in the league with over 1,300 games of experience, from between the benches called it “about as bad a two periods I’ve seen an NHL player play.”
After the game, a 4-2 loss that was New York’s first victory of the season, Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch deadpanned, “I’ve seen Evan play better.”
“We cannot just accept that,” Knoblauch said. “Mistakes happen, but you have to address what types of mistakes are happening. Evan’s a fantastic player, one of the best in the league, certainly one of the best defensemen in the NHL. Tonight was not his night, but I’ve always seen him respond and play much better after games like this.”
It also did not come at a great time, with Tampa Bay general manager Julien BriseBois – a member of Hockey Canada’s management staff – watching in person. Bouchard figures to be an extreme long shot to make the Olympic team, especially because of his tendency to turn the puck over.
Ekholm, who is usually the safety valve to make up for errors Bouchard commits, said one of the soon-to-be 26-year-old’s super powers is his ability to forget quickly. His coach has noticed that over consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup Final and plenty of other times.
“I usually see him bounce back immediately after a bad shift, maybe a turnover, and it doesn’t faze him, and he makes the next play the next time,” Knoblauch said. “But we’re going to move on from it. We can’t dwell on it too much. We’ve got to learn from things that happened. Evan’s one of our best players, and we’ve got to have him playing as one of our best.”
Bouchard said teammates consistently tell him during games like this to “keep making plays.” Ekholm is confident those plays will come Saturday at the New Jersey Devils.
“I’m pretty sure we’ll see a different Bouchard,” Ekholm said. “I’m sure he’ll be back with force and vengeance.”
