Welcome to my annual player review series, where I dive into the Edmonton Oilers season player-by-player. We’ll look back at the season that was, what kind of impact each player had, and what we could see from them next season. You can read about the analytics behind my analysis here. When we talk about players having breakouts in their career, it’s usually just one season in which they break out, and it’s almost always offensively. Something will click for the player and they begin to drive offence, score goals and rack up the points. That’s what happened for Evan Bouchard in the 2023-24 season, becoming a point-per-game defenceman with 18 goals and 82 points in 81 games, adding six goals, 26 assists and 32 points in 25 playoff games. He broke Paul Coffey’s single-playoff record for assists by a defenceman and couldn’t stop producing offence. But the 2024-25 campaign was a bit different for Bouchard. He actually saw some regression in terms of his offence, scoring just 14 goals and 67 points in 82 games, bu
