April 29, 2025 by Ryan Lotsberg

Hockey fans have an emotional connection to their favourite teams and the players on those teams. Some hockey players excite you by scoring goals. Others tantalize with their blazing speed. Some players get your adrenaline pumping with crushing hits or rage-fuelled fights. Others frustrate the living h-e-double hockey sticks out of you with their giveaways or their defensive miscues. 

One Edmonton Oiler has a unique way of taking Oilers fans through the widest range of emotions. He will dazzle you with brilliant passes and big goals, and then he will crush your soul with a sloppy giveaway that leads to a goal or a missed defensive read that goes awry. Watching Evan Bouchard play hockey is certainly an experience.

Game 4 of the Oilers’ first round series against the Los Angeles Kings is an incredible example of the roller coaster of emotions that Bouchard takes fans on when he plays. His giveaway at the Kings blue line led to Alex Laferriere lobbing a pass to Kevin Fiala, who was able to knock the puck out of the air, corral it, and score on a breakaway. Bouchard and Darnell Nurse were both in Fiala’s vicinity when he accepted the pass, but it was like they weren’t there because they couldn’t stop Fiala. That goal made the score 3-1 for the Kings.

Related: Callouts, Standouts, and Shoutouts: Oilers even series with dramatic comeback win in Game 4

It’s really hard to stay mad at a guy when he scores two goals to erase a two-goal deficit in a huge playoff game at home, including the game-tying goal with 28 seconds left in the game. Bouchard’s goals both came off of Bouch-Bombs from the point. The 3-2 goal bounced in off a Kings defender’s shin pad, and the 3-3 goal went in untouched. Bouchard made an excellent defensive play to strip Quinton Byfield of the puck at the Kings blue line to start the sequence that eventually ended with him scoring the game-tying goal and sending it to overtime.

He took Oilers fans from a grim sinking feeling after the 3-1 goal to excitement over getting back within a goal to pure elation over tying the game in the final thirty seconds. Bouchard was outscored 1-3 at five-on-five in Game 4, but he scored those two critically important goals. You don’t like the goals against and you start thinking he’s the worst defenceman on the planet; but then you look at Natural Stat Trick and see that he had a 63.76% five-on-five expected goals percentage and a 17-7 advantage in scoring chances for (70.83%), and you see his point totals and you just shake your head. That’s the Evan Bouchard Experience in a nutshell.

Bouchard also scored two goals in a dramatic Game 3 comeback win, including the game-winner just ten seconds after Evander Kane had tied the game. He put up four goals in two games in Edmonton, and they were all meaningful goals. Bouchard puts up ridiculous offensive numbers in the playoffs. He now has the second most playoff goals in franchise history (17) behind Paul Coffey (36), and the second highest points per game rate (1.14) of any defenceman in NHL history (Bobby Orr – 1.24). Bouchard had the third most points in the last three playoff seasons combined only behind teammates Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

Bouchard has been outscored 5-9 at five-on-five in the first four games of the playoffs. He’s been outscored 3-6 in high danger goals at five-on-five. Six of the nine five-on-five goals that Bouchard has been on the ice for have been scored on high danger chances. That tells me that big mistakes are happening while he is on the ice and that the Oilers are getting punished for those mistakes. You could also look at his five-on-five on-ice save percentage of 78.05% and surmise that goaltending is a factor in Bouchard’s goal share. You could also look at Natural Stat Trick’s Line Tool and see that Bouchard and Nurse have been outscored 2-5 at five-on-five. Bouchard’s overall five-on-five goals deficit is minus four, and it’s minus three while playing with Nurse. I have long felt that the Nurse-Bouchard pairing would be effective, but maybe they’re just too high-event in their own end to be a long-term pairing.

Natural Stat Trick also says that Bouchard’s expected goals percentage at five-on-five is 59.88% through Game 4, which is exceptional. It isn’t as high as it was in last year’s playoffs (63.07%) while he was playing Mattias Ekholm (who is currently injured), but it’s still a great number. What Bouchard and Ekholm did together last year was unbelievable. While the loss of Ekholm has hurt the Oilers, let’s not make the mistake of assuming that Bouchard is so bad defensively that he needs Ekholm to prevent him from imploding. Their play as a pairing took a step back this season, and Bouchard was making these kinds of mistakes while playing with Ekholm all season long, so Bouchard’s slight regression in expected goals percentage in these playoffs through four games compared to last year’s playoffs isn’t solely based on Ekholm’s absence.

It’s totally fair to say that while Bouchard has more giveaways and defensive lapses than fans would like, Bouchard has a tremendously positive impact on the game with his outstanding possession metrics, scoring chance metrics, and offensive production. The giveaways and the mistakes on goals against are frustrating, and his seeming lack of urgency at times is maddening; but what he brings to the table offensively is a rarity.

When I think about the Evan Bouchard Experience, I think of an attraction at an amusement park where a dude in a ridiculous suit and a top hat welcomes you and warns you of the twists and turns that await inside. You don’t know what’s happening when you’re going through it, but you come out of it with an experience that’s hard to describe because of all the twists and turns. It made you feel excited and scared at different points, but it was fun.

Others may disagree, but I find the positives outweigh the negatives, making the Evan Bouchard a generally positive experience. I’m excited about many more years of the Evan Bouchard Experience, even if it will come with a hefty cap hit starting next season. For now, I’m going to watch the rest of the playoffs play out and hope for more magical moments from Bouchard in the coming weeks.