3 Reasons Evan Bouchard Could Hit 100 Points This Season

Let's talk about Evan Bouchard, because the number he needs to hit is honestly kind of wild once you think about it. He needs just five more points than he put up last year to become the first Oilers defenceman to score 100 points since Paul Coffey back in 1985-86. Five points is not an outrageous leap; it's essentially asking him to repeat what he already did.

Reason one: the math is already in his favour.

Bouchard put up 95 points last season — 21 goals and a league-leading 74 assists among all defencemen — while playing all 82 games. This year, Edmonton plays 84 games instead of 82. That's two extra chances to pick up points before he even has to be "better" than he was last year. He's not chasing some crazy leap in production; he's basically just chasing consistency plus a slightly longer schedule.

Reason two: he's sitting in about the best offensive setup a defenceman could ask for.

He's running the power play with McDavid and Draisaitl drawing all kinds of attention, and he's not just some guy waiting around to fire a one-timer. He's become a legit distributor, and it's not like his numbers were all empty calories off the star treatment either — he had 60 even-strength points last season on top of his power-play production. That tells you this isn't just "he's good because he plays with good players." This is a guy who's genuinely elite in his own right now.

Reason three: nobody's really challenging him for that role.

Edmonton didn't go out and add another offensive defenceman who could threaten his spot running the top power-play unit, and with Darnell Nurse gone, Bouchard might actually end up handling even more responsibility at five-on-five. He's also locked into a four-year deal right smack in his prime, not aging out of anything anytime soon.

There are reasons why Bouchard might regress.

There's a real counterargument here too. Hitting 95 points is an enormous number, and history shows that even elite defencemen like Cale Makar and Quinn Hughes have found it difficult to maintain 90-plus-point production year after year. Regression is a real risk anytime someone puts up a career year.

But between the extra games, the offensive setup around him, and no obvious challenger for his role, Bouchard's got about as clean a path to triple digits as you could design. If he gets there, it's not just a personal milestone — it ends a 40-year wait for Edmonton fans.