Evan Bouchard found himself in some hot water in the early stages of Monday night’s Edmonton Oilers game.
The 26-year-old defenceman has not had a great start to the season, and things came to a head in the first period against the Columbus Blue Jackets. Edmonton was enjoying a good start to the game, outplaying the Blue Jackets and carrying most of the momentum. That is, until Bouchard took an undisciplined penalty that allowed Columbus to score the first goal of the game.
It was exactly the type of thing that Edmonton had been trying to avoid, and Oilers coach Kris Knoblauch didn’t let his top defenceman off the hook. Bouchard didn’t play another shift after his penalty and had just 4:10 of ice time in the first period.
Knoblauch told reporters a bit more about the reason for the benching after the game.
“The penalty that he took, kinda after the play, a retaliatory penalty. There’s been a couple of those,” Knoblauch said. “We need him to be one of our better players, because he’s a tremendous player.”
“I liked our energy.”
Coach Knoblauch weighs in on the #Oilers comeback overtime victory over Columbus. @Enterprise | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/FfamBCvdQf
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) November 11, 2025
This is not an often-occurrence for the Oilers bench boss. Knoblauch usually gives his star players lots of room to make up for mistakes, but this may have been for an accumulation of things from Bouchard, not just the penalty.
Bouchard was involved in a tense conversation with McDavid during Sunday morning’s practice as well.
It seemed to be the right move as Bouchard responded with a strong second and third period. He assisted on a McDavid goal to get the Oilers back into things, and the team itself rallied to turn a 3-1 deficit into a 5-4 OT victory.
The Oilers coach liked the response he saw from Bouchard.
“I thought he was great after. I thought he played a really strong second and third period,” Knoblauch said. “It didn’t look like he was rattled, I thought he responded well… He did get benched for a little bit, but it didn’t bother him. He was able to move on and played a great game.”
Edmonton was in desperate need of a victory after last weekend’s embarrassing 9-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche. That desperation may have been what caused Knoblauch to bench his best defenceman.
It was a risky play, but it wound up working out for the Oilers.
