Edmonton Oilers coach Dave Tippett on Evan Bouchard: “We're going to try to get him in pretty soon”

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This in from Edmonton Oilers coach Dave Tippett on Evan Bouchard, in response to Journal reporter Jim Matheson’s question on whether Bouchard would play Tuesday night against Ottawa: “We’re going to try to get him in pretty soon”

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My take

1. Ethan Bear missed practice on Monday, likely due to taking a puck in the head against the Leafs on Saturday night. If he’s out for awhile there’s room on the Edmonton roster for another right-shot d-man, which means Bouchard could finally get a game with the Oilers this year.

2. Edmonton is blessed with solid NHL depth on defence right now, with Darnell Nurse, Caleb Jones, Slater Koekkoek, Kris Russell and William Lagesson on the left side, Bear, Adam Larsson, Tyson Barrie and Bouchard on the right side. This is going to be a huge asset for the Oilers as fatigue and injury take hold in the compressed schedule, but it’s not great news for Bouchard right now. It’s been hard for Tippett to find him a game, especially as Lagesson and Koekkoek must remain on the team’s 23-man roster, as opposed to going on waivers where there’s a good chance they’d be scooped up.

3. There was more impetus to get Bouchard into the line-up one week ago when the Oilers power play wasn’t scoring. One week ago I noted that Edmonton’s 2021 power play was getting chances at the same high rate as the excellent 2019-20 power play, it just wasn’t getting much puck luck. I predicted that this would change, that the goals would come, and they have, with nine power play goals this past week. Quarterback Tyson Barrie finally fired in a goal against Ottawa on Sunday, meaning there’s less reason to try to change up things by inserting Bouchard. The power play is now scoring scoring at the same rate as last year’s brilliant power play, and it’s generating a higher rate chances, 1.29 per two minutes of power play time, than the group did last year, 1.07 per two.

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4. Many Oilers fans and observers are keen to see Bouchard get his chance because of his potential as a puck mover. Data analyst Byron Bader of Calgary, creator of HockeyProspecting.com and an NHL draft consultant, ranks Bouchard as having a high probability of becoming an NHL star, and compares him favourably to d-man Dougie Hamilton, a current NHL offensive dynamo. Bader does this by focusing on the offensive production of Bouchard and Hamilton, and comparing their production to more than 2000 other NHL d-men over the years, equalizing that offensive production for the quality of their league and scoring level of their era. On Twitter, Bader said of Bouchard: “Starting to update the models with the very limited Euro data from this season. The process isn’t done yet but Evan Bouchard … wow. He’s a match made in heaven to work the PP with McDavid and Draisaitl… As of his partial D3 (third year after his draft), Bouchard has the ninth highest star prob of the entire defensemen database (2,190 dmen in total).  Seven out of eight directly above him are/were stars. Six out of eight directly below him are/were stars.”

5. Bouchard only improved his stock coming to Oilers camp this year in great shape after a strong showing in Sweden’s Second Division, where he scored 17 points in 21 games. We watched almost all his games at the Cult of Hockey. Here’s a sample of what we reported on Bouchard’s play:

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At the Cult