Mattias Ekholm<\/a> said. \u201cWho can do that in the League today or historically? That\u2019s a game where he wins it for us, really.<\/p>\n\u201cHe\u2019s out there with some good players, too, but as an offensive defenseman, I don\u2019t think you can play a better game, honestly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bouchard\u2019s recent play has helped erase the memory of some painful mistakes earlier this season, although his teammates believe he\u2019s long since forgotten about them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think his biggest superpower is that it just falls off him; he doesn\u2019t care, he doesn\u2019t linger on things,\u201d Ekholm said. \u201cHe\u2019ll make a mistake, but he\u2019s right back out the next shift and does his thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cTonight, you saw it and you see it most of the nights, but sometimes it\u2019s not going to go his way as well. When that happens, maybe you can think back to this one, because in my opinion he does far more good things than he does bad ones, and I think he\u2019s a top, top defenseman in this league.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to measure Bouchard\u2019s value. He ranks third on the Oilers with 55 points (14 goals, 41 assists) in 53 games, is first in time on ice per game (24:44) and plays on both the power play and penalty kill. He is usually on the ice in the last minute whether Edmonton is leading or trailing.<\/p>\n
The Oilers (26-19-8) host the Anaheim Ducks on Monday (8:30 p.m. ET; Prime, KCOP-13, Victory+).<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my opinion, he\u2019s one of the best defensemen in the League,\u201d Knoblauch said. \u201cI see him every night so maybe I\u2019m a little bit bias, but everything that he does he obviously helps.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur power play, our 5-on-5 play, you see how much he drives the play and how much everyone benefits when he\u2019s on the ice.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He went through a rough stretch at the beginning of this season, when giveaways became an issue and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":436941,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-436940","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436940","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436940"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436940\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/436941"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436940"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436940"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436940"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}