'I've fallen in love': Ultimate Leafs homer praises Oilers d-man Bouchard
Said O'Neill on a TSN segment with host Chris Haytes and former NHL goalie Jamie McLennan on their OverDrive show:
I got a bit of a crazy statement after watching last night and watching throughout the playoffs. And before the playoffs, you would have punched me as you could. I think the pecking order on D in the National Hockey League is one, Cale Makar and two Bouchard. Maybe it's recency bias, because all those other guys aren't playing, but I think he's that good man. I think he is unbelievable.'
Hayes objected, saying Bouchard has been phenomenal but he'd take Quinn Hughes of Vancouver over Bouchard.
Said O'Neill: 'If there was a little hut, an elite defenseman hut, and Quinn Hughes was in it, and Cale Makar and they opened up the door and said, 'Evan, come on in,' they would open the door and say, 'You're a member. Now, come and have a coffee.''
McLennan brought up a rancid turnover that Bouchard had made in a November game against Toronto. 'Bouchard comes around the net and rips it off McDavid ass. And I think after that, Toronto caught up, and Marner wanted an overtime. I think playoff Bouchard, that's different. What we're seeing is a guy who can play in all scenarios and doesn't get overwhelmed.'
Said O'Neill: 'I've fallen in love with the guy, man.'
My take
1. What's next Cathal Kelly proclaiming how much he loves the Oilers? Nick Kypreos and Bruce Arthur saying Connor McDavid should always be an Oiler?
2. I've been in that camp of Edmonton Oilers fans who has consistently and enthusiastically, year in, year out, good times and bad, admired what Evan Bouchard brings to the game. Before his breakout 82 point season in 2023-24, I predicted on Oilers Now he'd get 90 points. Long before others, I said he was the Oil's No. 1 d-man. In the playoffs last year, I recognized early on he'd taken his game to an entirely new level of excellence. As he struggled this year with an outbreak of rancid turnovers, I continued to argue he was a big game player and should be on Team Canada at the Four Nations Cup.
3. I'm here to tell you right now that O'Neill is right, that Bouchard has yet again taken his game to a new level, that he's improved on his 2024 playoff performance and is playing at his highest level of even strength efficiency ever, all the while running Edmonton's brilliant power play while coming on in the Los Angeles series to settle down their penalty kill, someone no one predicted or expected, save for maybe Kris Knoblauch and Paul Coffey, who bet on Bouchard on the PK.
4. Why have I been so bullish on Bouchard all these years, and able to call out his play for what it's been: good-to-outstanding. It's all in the numbers, specifically the Grade A shots data we've compiled at the Cult of Hockey for 15 years. We've done video review of every Grade A shot for and against the Oilers in that time to see which players are responsible for Grade A shots for and which players make mistakes on Grade A shots against. What became clear early on was that Bouchard more than any other Oil d-man we'd ever seen was able to create Grade A shots. His defence was average at best in his early years, but he was Grade A shot-producing monster.
5. What's changed since then is that Bouchard in the playoffs has take his defensive game top a new level of success, while amping up his passing game even more. He's not quite at the defensive level of excellence we saw from Kris Russell and Adam Larsson in their Oilers primes, but he's become a good-to-great positional defensive d-man, not any kind of Big Bobby Clobber cycle-buster, but a d-man who almost always makes the right reads, keeps his body between his check and the Oilers net, responsibly guards his spot in the Oilers zone defence, and gets the puck out of trouble fast when he wins it back.
6. Does Bouchard still make some bad passes? For sure. That's going to happen when you've so often got the puck on your stick. Does he make some bad reads? Yes, but not any more than other d-man and what's become a strong Oilers defensive corp.
7. O'Neill is right. Bouchard is now the second or third best d-man in the NHL after Makar and maybe Hughes. And the next person to say Bouchard shouldn't be on Team Canada in the coming Olympic games should never speak in public about hockey again.
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