Young Edmonton Oiler transformed into elite defender by playing ‘old man’ hockey

I never would have thought Evan Bouchard would win the Norris Trophy, not with such fantastic young players like Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, Rasmus Dahlin, Miro Heiskanen, Noah Dobson and Adam Fox as his NHL contemporaries.

But now, after watching Bouchard radically improve his defensive game under coach Paul Coffey and especially so in the 2024 playoffs, I’ll suggest Bouchard has got a shot at it.

Bouchard was regraded this regular season as, at best, an average d-man, but I’ll suggest that his play picked up on defence as the season went along, so much so that he was the Oilers top two-way d-man in the playoffs, excelling on the attack and in his own end.

How did he do this? Bouchard was a brilliant attacking player all year, putting up 82 points in 81 regular season games and 32 points in 25 playoff games. But his defensive play took a major step up in the post-season, so much so that Coach Kris Knoblauch relied on Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm consistently and constantly in the toughest of game situations. They played heavy minutes against the toughest of NHL competition and they crushed it.

Bouchard has often been compared to the excellent attacking d-man Larry Murphy, but in this 2024 playoff season I started to be reminded now and then of another player, all-time NHL great Niklas Lidstrom of the Detroit Red Wings, both on the attack and on defence.

I’m not here to tell you Bouchard is as good as Lidstrom, just that aspects of Bouchard’s game started to resemble some aspects of Lidstrom’s game.

For example, Lidstrom beat up on opposing teams by making long and lethal stretch passes in the neutral zone almost as soon as he got the puck. Just as the other team had fired the puck out of their own zone, he would pick it up and instantly orchestrate a new attack before the defenders were able to fully change or fully regroup. It was a deadly tactic and one I started to see Bouchard employ more regularly as this season progressed.

The similarities to Lidstrom’s game also came through on defence. In 2009, after studying a 39-year-old Lidstrom go up against Sidney Crosby in his attacking prime, I came away deeply impressed with Lidstrom’s “old man” defensive game, how he used his head to read the play and consistently thwart Pittsburgh attacks, even as Lidstrom almost never hit anyone, even as he avoided in-your-face defensive tactics.

Lidstrom’s game was defined by understanding and guile. At the time, I compiled a list of markers his defensive play.

Here were the tactics that defined his excellence

* Skate to where the puck is going, not to where it’s been.

* Do not hit or be hit.

* Move fast, but do not hurry.

* React, but do not over-react.

* Keep your body between your own net and the attacking player.

* Let every man cover his own man.

* Watch for the real threat, not the apparent threat.

* Cover the passing lanes. It is the man without the puck who is most likely to score.

* Do not attack the man who has cleanly gone by you. Cover the players rushing in late for the rebound. The goalie can stop the one, but not the other.

In the 2024, Bouchard started to do many of these same things. He let the old man in to his defensive game.

Light fun has been made of Bouchard for years that he’s an old man in a young man’s body.

Ironic then that it’s by going full old man when it comes to defensive tactics that Bouchard greatly raised his d-zone game in playoffs.

The 24-year-old Oilers d-man started to resemble that 39-year-old Red Wings stalwart. And in doing so Bouchard greatly cut down on his major mistakes on Grade A shots per game, but also his worst such mistakes.

At the Cult of hockey, we define and count up all major mistakes on Grade A shots against, but we also count up the worst mistakes — such as turnovers, bad line changes, bad pinches, allowed breakaways and pucks deflected in tight on net — that are most likely to lead to 5-alarm shots and goals against