Jekyll and Hyde- What should Edmonton do with Evan Bouchard?

[UrbanImpact]

Should they continue trusting him, bench him? trade him?

Bouchard is a point per game D-man but has become an absolute defensive liability for Edmonton. Edmonton is tight as it is against the cap and cant afford a 4mil Powerplay Specialist.

Even Ekholm cant carry him anymore. What has happened to Bouchard?

Pros:
Bomb for a Slapshot

Cons:
Defensive Awareness
Lack of Motor
No Physical battle

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[SeanMoneyHands]

The Bouch bomb is untouchable.

 

[I Hate Blake Coleman]

I was saying Boo-uchard

 

[Sasha Orlov]

Send him on a trip to Belize

 

[UrbanImpact]

Can Paul Coffey fix this?

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

Can Paul Coffey fix this?

Guy couldn't f***ing play defense himself, how's he supposed to fix this ?


Bouchard is ass defensively, but it's not like the rest of the team is solid defensively and he goes all rogue and f***s everything up.

 

[UrbanImpact]

I also dont understand why Bouchard has over 40% Dzone starts? At this point, Edmonton needs to start sheltering him... even Cale Makar only has 28% Dzone starts

 

[Szechwan]

Bouchard, from an outsiders perspective is fascinating to watch. PPG defensemen are rare and you'd think would always be a valuable commodity, but this guy just cannot read the play in his own end at all. His gap control is very questionable and the second an opposing team forces him to switch coverage he's completely lost.

I think it's also worth discussing Ekholm, that guy seems to have absorbed Bouch's brain worms because I'm seeing him make more bad reads this season than he has in his entire career.

 

[WaitingForThatCab]

Shelter the hell out of him. What else can they do?

Personally, I have no use for defensemen who can't defend.

 

[barkovcanfinnish]

He is an extreme version of an offensive-defensemen, where people would find it offensive if you called him a defensemen.

 

[GreatSaveEssensa]

Shelter the hell out of him. What else can they do?

Personally, I have no use for defensemen who can't defend.

Problem is the rest if the D are almost just as bad. You cant shelter all of them.

 

[HockeyVirus]

The problem is, the best thing for his development is to shelter him. But who else is on RD? Ceci and Broberg who looks like a bust? So Bouchard is by default their best RD.

But he is simply too raw and hasn't been developed or coached properly it seems. Offensively, with the puck on his stick, he is very good. Without the puck, not an NHL player.

What they should do is trade for a legit top 4 RD, send down Broberg, make a shutdown pairing with Ekholm and the new top 4 D, give Nurse - Ceci easier minutes, and use Bouchard on the third pairing in specific situations where he can play his game without facing other teams top offensive players.

 

[HitterD]

Is this Marc-Andre Bergeron 2.0 for Edmonton?

 

[Mrb1p]

Nothing happened I had the exact scouting report of him in 2018. He always was pretty straight-forward as a player, great shooting ability on the blue line and all it comes with, okay to good puck skills but very little in the skating and brain department.

Matheson is the same, but swap shooting for skating.

 

[wetcoast]

Should they continue trusting him, bench him? trade him?

Bouchard is a point per game D-man but has become an absolute defensive liability for Edmonton. Edmonton is tight as it is against the cap and cant afford a 4mil Powerplay Specialist.

Even Ekholm cant carry him anymore. What has happened to Bouchard?

Pros:
Bomb for a Slapshot

Cons:
Defensive Awareness
Lack of Motor
No Physical battle

This is a real biased way to look at Bouchard and he really isn't the problem.

Goaltending and team confidence is.

 

[biturbo19]

Nothing happened I had the exact scouting report of him in 2018. He always was pretty straight-forward as a player, great shooting ability on the blue line and all it comes with, okay to good puck skills but very little in the skating and brain department.

Matheson is the same, but swap shooting for skating.

Yeah. I think this is who Bouchard has pretty much always been. He's an offensive defenceman who doesn't make the greatest reads defensively, and doesn't have the high end mobility to recover.

That's exacerbated by the whole team around him breaking down into a completely incoherent mess defensively. Really hard for a player who struggles with defensive reads and puck management in the first place, and has lackluster skating ability to react and adjust on the fly.

He had a brief stretch of looking a lot better when Ekholm arrived and seemed to settle him down quite a bit. But even then, you could still see flashes of the bad. But it certainly looks like they rushed Ekholm back, and he looks pretty incapable of stabilizing anything right now either. So with the entire team in shambles defensively...someone like Bouchard without the tools to cope, playing big minutes is obviously going to stand out and look particularly awful defensively.

 

[Korpse]

his is a real biased way to look at Bouchard and he really isn't the problem.

Bouchard is absolutely a part of the problem. He make some egregious mistakes off the puck that find their way into the net. The lack of defensive awareness is apparent, he just reacts to where the puck is going. 200 GP and there has been little improvement in that regard.

 

[mphmiles]

The Oilers’ front office is going to be in a really tough spot when his contract is up. As long as he’s running their power play, he’s going to put up a bunch of points, and defensemen who put up points get paid, pretty much without exception, so he’s going to have all the leverage, despite being a quite limited all around player.

 

[wetcoast]

Bouchard is absolutely a part of the problem. He make some egregious mistakes off the puck that find their way into the net. The lack of defensive awareness is apparent, he just reacts to where the puck is going. 200 GP and there has been little improvement in that regard.

My point is that if you switched out Bouchard for an above average Dman but not a top elite say too 50 it would have little to no impact on the team.

 

[WarriorofTime]

Maybe quit icing a bunch of bums like Cody Ceci, Brett Kulak and Vincent Desharnais in your 4-6 DMan roles. A bunch of 27-30 year old nothings.

 

[jackjohnson]

Should they continue trusting him, bench him? trade him?

Bouchard is a point per game D-man but has become an absolute defensive liability for Edmonton. Edmonton is tight as it is against the cap and cant afford a 4mil Powerplay Specialist.

Even Ekholm cant carry him anymore. What has happened to Bouchard?

Pros:
Bomb for a Slapshot

Cons:
Defensive Awareness
Lack of Motor
No Physical battle

I thought people in Edmonton loved the Bouch Bum, especially Oilers broadcast booth whenever he takes that slapper from the Blueline on the PP

 

[Korpse]

My point is that if you switched out Bouchard for an above average Dman but not a top elite say too 50 it would have little to no impact on the team.

That’s fair. One player isn’t going to fix the problem, there’s a handful of players making similar efforts on the defensive side, I’ll say unlike others on the team I think with Bouchard it’s more about a lack of awareness rather than lack of buying in. He does need to be managed better and throwing Ekholm next to him isn’t going to cover up his deficiencies.

 

[jackjohnson]

Maybe quit icing a bunch of bums like Cody Ceci, Brett Kulak and Vincent Desharnais in your 4-6 DMan roles. A bunch of 27-30 year old nothings.

I thought that was a cup favourite lineup, what happened??

 

[TLEH]

He should be a 2nd or 3rd pair RD playing PP1 and soft minutes. Unfortunately EDM doesn't have that luxury.

 

[jackjohnson]

The Oilers’ front office is going to be in a really tough spot when his contract is up. As long as he’s running their power play, he’s going to put up a bunch of points, and defensemen who put up points get paid, pretty much without exception, so he’s going to have all the leverage, despite being a quite limited all around player.

Hope Holland signs him to matching 9.5 mil Nurse contract special so they have a matching pair of anchors on their Blueline.