Wednesday (Oct. 29) marked 100 days until the start of the 2026 Winter Games, which will take place in Italy from Feb. 6-22, with the men’s hockey tournament running from Feb. 11-22. Milano Cortina 2026 will be the first Olympics in 12 years to include NHL players.
Hockey Canada has named six players to its preliminary men’s Olympic roster, a sextet that includes Oilers captain Connor McDavid. That leaves 19 roster spots to be filled when Team Canada’s roster is officially unveiled, which is expected to happen around Jan. 1.
What a team, eh? 🇨🇦 #MilanoCortina
— NHL (@NHL) October 29, 2025
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One of those hoping to represent his country in Italy is McDavid’s Oilers teammate, defenceman Evan Bouchard. During the summer, both TSN and NHL.com projected that Bouchard would be a member of the 2026 Canadian men’s hockey team.
Wednesday’s 100-day countdown brought the latest Olympic roster predictions from NHL.com. But this time, Bouchard’s name was not one of the 25 players picked to be on Team Canada.
Bouchard’s Omission Is Not Surprising
For anyone who has been watching the Oilers over the first three weeks of Edmonton’s 2025-26 NHL schedule, it comes as no great shock that Bouchard is not listed among the eight defencemen projected for Team Canada. The 26-year-old native of Oakville, Ont., has had a dreadful start to the season, marred by ghastly defensive play and a drop in offensive production.
But while Bouchard’s omission may not be surprising, it provides a stinging rebuke of his performance thus far in 2025-26: Three weeks is a pretty small sample size, and yet, Bouchard has made such a terrible impression in such a short span of time that he suddenly finds himself off Canada’s projected roster.
Bouchard Has Been a Disaster on Defence
Defensively, Bouchard has been an absolute dumpster fire. He’s already guilty of more misplays and breakdowns than most elite blueliners will commit in an entire season.
There was the time he was the last man back, bringing the puck up ice, and attempted to dangle around an opposing player at centre ice, only to be stripped of it by a forward who skated in all alone and scored on Oilers goalie Stuart Skinner. Then there was the time during an Edmonton power play that he left his man, allowing one of the defending players to spring a wide-open teammate on a breakaway that resulted in a goal on Skinner. And there was the time when the Oilers were pressing for a tying goal with Skinner pulled for the extra attacker, that Bouchard missed his check, resulting in the opposition getting the puck out of their zone and scoring an empty net goal. And that was all in just one game.
Bouchard has never been known as a great defender. In fact, he’s got a reputation for this kind of stuff. While he’s shown at times that he can play strong defensively, Bouchard never goes long without making the kind of gaffe that leads to facepalm emojis being texted among Oilers fans.
Bouchard Not Producing at Normal Rate
The thing with Bouchard, however, is that he’s such an incredible offensive talent that his defensive deficiencies can be forgiven as long as he’s producing at the other end of the rink. But he’s not been doing that so far in 2025-26.
Related: 4 Takeaways From Oilers’ 6-3 Win Over Mammoth
Before having his best statistical game of 2025-26 on Tuesday, when he picked up three assists and finished with a plus/minus rating of plus-3 in Edmonton’s 6-3 home win over the Utah Mammoth, Bouchard had totalled just four points while registering a minus-9 rating over the first 10 games of the season. Those numbers represented a significant decline for the blueliner, who over 2023-24 and 2024-25 averaged 0.91 points per game in the regular season and 1.17 points per game in the playoffs.
Could Bouchard’s effort against the Mammoth be a sign that he’s starting to turn things around? After going pointless over Edmonton’s opening six contests, he is on a five-game point streak, although Tuesday was his first multi-point performance of 2025-26.
Bouchard Can Still Make Team Canada
If Bouchard played himself out of a place on the Olympic roster so quickly, then theoretically he could play himself back on to Team Canada in short order, too. NHL.com’s Mike Zeisberger acknowledged that the Oilers’ rearguard is still very much in the conversation, writing, “the most debatable omission here could be Evan Bouchard of the Oilers and his signature Bouch Bomb slap shot from the point. Truth be told, he had a rough start to the season, when defensive deficiencies were magnified.”
This next stretch will be pivotal for Bouchard if he is to have any chance of going to Italy in February. He will have ample opportunity to make an impression, as Edmonton plays 13 games in the next 24 days, beginning Thursday (Oct. 30) when the Oilers host the New York Rangers at Rogers Place.
