Evan Bouchard well on course for an NHL record he does not want

While it might not look quite as bad as at the same point as last season, a 6-7-1 record after 14 games still doesn't make for positive reading. The Edmonton Oilers are just not a very good hockey team right now, and that's a reality as opposed to just being a harsh assessment of their play on the ice.

Entering Saturday night's matchup in Vancouver against the Canucks, the Oilers are tied-fifth in the Pacific Division and sitting outside the playoff places. Among other things, they are somehow tied second-worst in the entire NHL for average goals scored.

This collective struggle obviously means there's plenty of individual players not performing up to their usual level. One such player, is Evan Bouchard.

A career year for Bouchard

Bouchard is coming off the best season of his career to date, with him setting personal bests in a number of categories. These included 18 goals, 64 assists, 82 total points, a +34 rating and 22:60 of average ice time, along with Corsi For and Fenwick For % in All Situations of 64.8 and 64.6 respectively.

Clearly, having Mattias Ekholm as his teammate in the first pairing has helped boost the 25-year-old's confidence and take his game to another level. His excellent form continued into the playoffs, where he finished second among all players with 32 points, which included an NHL record 26 assists by a defenceman; he also led everyone with a +14 rating.

With all this in mind, Bouchard was understandably expected to build on this and arguably be even better in 2024-25. Instead, he is in some ways the poster child for the Oilers' struggles thus far.

An NHL record to avoid

This can be best summed up with a statistic, which has the Oakville, Ontario native on course to set a record he would rather have no part of. As per Jason Gregor of Sports 1440, he leads the NHL with 51 shot attempts blocked and is on pace for 321 by season's end.

Providing some more context, Gregor adds that the current record is 321 shot attempts blocked, albeit this statistic has only been tracked since 2006. In any event, it still doesn't look good so far for a player who had 185 blocked all of last season.

Now of course, we not suggesting that resolving this issue alone will be enough to get the Oilers back on track, but it would still definitely help. Bouchard so far has three goals and seven overall points through 14 games, which is basically 50 percent less efficient than last season.

The 2018 10th overall draft pick doesn't usually struggle to get shots off well, and is overall an extremely gifted offensive blue liner. As such, the hope is that this is just a temporary glitch which will soon be a thing of the past, or at least he hopes so.

Defence looking just as bad

While Bouchard continues to struggle offensively, it has also led to more attention being paid to his defensive effort, or lack thereof. His awareness has been waning, and using the previous game against the Vegas Golden Knights as an example, he looked particularly bad on their first two goals.

As a sub context to all of this, don't forget the right-shot defenceman is set to become a restricted free agent after this season. In addition, the Oilers have put long-term extension talks on hold for the foreseeable future.

There is still a long season ahead of the Oilers, meaning plenty of time for Bouchard to rediscover his game. However, until then he has to deal with the double concern of setting an unwanted NHL record and possibly costing himself money on his next deal.

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