{"id":309836,"date":"2025-10-17T04:35:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:35:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/309836\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T04:35:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T04:35:10","slug":"evan-bouchard-has-a-turnover-and-mistake-prone-game-in-the-oilers-loss-at-the-islanders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/309836\/","title":{"rendered":"Evan Bouchard has a turnover and mistake-prone game in the Oilers’ loss at the Islanders"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Evan Bouchard had arguably one of the worst games of his NHL career in the Edmonton Oilers\u2019 loss<\/a> at the New York Islanders on Thursday night. <\/p>\n

Mistakes he made led directly to two goals against, and he had several more giveaways and blunders that led to quality scoring chances. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to have to improve on that,\u201d Bouchard said. \u201cYou learn from it \u2014 obviously a lot of learning. Yeah, part of the game is forget good and bad, so move on, be ready next game.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bouchard is the fourth-highest paid defenseman in the NHL and tied for 14th among all players at a salary cap hit of $10.5 million, and he\u2019s well worth that price when he\u2019s creating more offense for his team than opponents. His 72 points over past three playoffs are 40 more than the next-closest player at the position.<\/p>\n

\u201cI know people can be hard on him for the mistakes, but you\u2019ve also got to look at the upside of what he brings,\u201d defense partner Mattias Ekholm said. \u201cI\u2019m sure he knows that he could\u2019ve made some other decisions tonight, but I know that there\u2019s other games and you saw the other night when he\u2019s just pulling through their forward and just makes everybody look silly and things that I wouldn\u2019t even think of. I\u2019d be careful criticizing him because that\u2019s who he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bouchard had the puck on his stick in the neutral zone late in the first period under little pressure and inexplicably had it stolen away by Mat Barzal, who broke in on Stuart Skinner to score his first goal since January.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust a bad play on my end,\u201d Bouchard said.<\/p>\n

Late in the second with Edmonton on the power play, Bouchard was in no-man\u2019s land when Bo Horvat got behind him and scored short-handed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I\u2019d be able to keep it in if (Islanders penalty-killer Jean-Gabriel Pageau) chipped it up the wall,\u201d Bouchard said. \u201cObviously, he didn\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the ESPN+ broadcast of the game, color analyst Ray Ferraro, a longtime forward in the league with over 1,300 games of experience, from between the benches called it \u201cabout as bad a two periods I\u2019ve seen an NHL player play.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the game, a 4-2 loss that was New York\u2019s first victory of the season, Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch deadpanned, \u201cI\u2019ve seen Evan play better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cannot just accept that,\u201d Knoblauch said. \u201cMistakes happen, but you have to address what types of mistakes are happening. Evan\u2019s a fantastic player, one of the best in the league, certainly one of the best defensemen in the NHL. Tonight was not his night, but I\u2019ve always seen him respond and play much better after games like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

It also did not come at a great time, with Tampa Bay general manager Julien BriseBois \u2014 a member of Hockey Canada\u2019s management staff \u2014 watching in person. Bouchard figures to be an extreme long shot to make the Olympic team, especially because of his tendency to turn the puck over.<\/p>\n

Ekholm, who is usually the safety valve to make up for errors Bouchard commits, said one of the soon-to-be 26-year-old\u2019s super powers is his ability to forget quickly. His coach has noticed that over consecutive trips to the Stanley Cup Final<\/a> and plenty of other times.<\/p>\n

\u201cI usually see him bounce back immediately after a bad shift, maybe a turnover, and it doesn\u2019t faze him, and he makes the next play the next time,\u201d Knoblauch said. \u201cBut we\u2019re going to move on from it. We can\u2019t dwell on it too much. We\u2019ve got to learn from things that happened. Evan\u2019s one of our best players, and we\u2019ve got to have him playing as one of our best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bouchard said teammates consistently tell him during games like this to \u201ckeep making plays.\u201d Ekholm is confident those plays will come Saturday at the New Jersey Devils. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m pretty sure we\u2019ll see a different Bouchard,\u201d Ekholm said. \u201cI\u2019m sure he\u2019ll be back with force and vengeance.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NHL: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nhl<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Evan Bouchard had arguably one of the worst games of his NHL career in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":309837,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[156530,2997,156527,21205,156532,140605,156528,405,403,1301,293,16068,156531,62,156529,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-309836","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-bo-horvat","9":"tag-edmonton-oilers","10":"tag-evan-bouchard","11":"tag-jean-gabriel-pageau","12":"tag-julien-brisebois","13":"tag-kris-knoblauch","14":"tag-mattias-ekholm","15":"tag-new-york","16":"tag-new-york-city","17":"tag-new-york-islanders","18":"tag-nhl","19":"tag-nhl-hockey","20":"tag-ray-ferraro","21":"tag-sports","22":"tag-stuart-skinner","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115387650802616739","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=309836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/309836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=309836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=309836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=309836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}