Top 3 Oilers studs from comeback 4-3 win versus the Wild
By Paul Taylor
2) Evan Bouchard
Evan Bouchard has quite rightly had his critics. Selected 10th overall in the 2018 draft, he has frustrated at times, in terms of his development and play on the ice.
However, things all seemed to finally come together for Bouchard last season, especially after the acquisition of Mattias Ekholm. The veteran defenceman helped build his young teammate’s confidence and performance.
Then, the 24-year-old started this season poorly, although to be fair, so did a lot of his teammates. What was particularly concerning though was his defensive play, with him making far too many unnecessary mistakes.
Bouchard has improved of late, although in reality his defensive play is unlikely ever to be up to the same level as, for example, Ekholm. At the same time though, there is no questioning his offensive talent.
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The Oakville, Ontario native has been on a tear of late, with points in nine consecutive games. Now you can make it 10 straight, after his two goals and one assist versus the Wild game him 27 points on the season.
Bouchard got things going in the first period, as he finished off a period of sustained pressure with a blast into the top right corner of the Wild net. He followed this up with the secondary assist, in the lead-up to McDavid’s brilliance on his goal.
The blue liner then showed off the full power of his lethal shot early in the final period, on what turned out to be the winning goal. Coach Kris Knoblauch was full of praise when speaking about his second goal postgame, as he said:
"“I saw that shot was 97 miles an hour. That doesn’t hurt. It’s definitely a skill. There’s plenty of guys that can place a puck in a certain location, have velocity and really hammer it like that, but there’s few guys in the NHL that can do both.”"