Three Key Things: Clutch goals from Evan Bouchard, Corey Perry scores again, and the Oilers can’t stop puck watching

Nothing like a little Saturday afternoon dance with the Dallas Stars to get your weekend going, amirite? How about when you toss in the fact that the Oilers closed out a 4-3 win in OT? It was a magical afternoon in Dallas if I do say so myself.

EVAN BOUCHARD SCORES TWO MASSIVE GOALS

I could not be happier with Evan Bouchard’s offensive game. Yeah, it seems likely that there are always going to be speed bumps on the defensive side of the puck, but at the other end of the ice, the guy is a stud. Bouchard came up clutch at key moments against the Stars, tying the game with his first goal and winning it with the second. In a game when where mistakes were ending up in the back of the net, Bouchard picked his spots beautifully on the Oilers’ first and fourth goals.

With neither Connor McDavid nor Leon Draisaitl finding the back of the net in Dallas, it was incredibly important that someone else stepped up to fill that void, and it was Bouchard picking up his 13th and 14th goals of the year — new career highs in that department for Edmonton’s dad — who closed out the win. Now with 50 points through only 51 games, Evan Bouchard is poised to sail past Sheldon Souray (53) and Chris Pronger (57) for the most points by a defenceman in the salary cap era.

COREY PERRY HAS GOALS IN BACK-TO-BACK GAMES

I’ll be the first to admit that I wasn’t overly keen on seeing Corey Perry alongside Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the first line, but it didn’t take long before he made me look like a dummy once again. Not only did Perry look pretty comfortable alongside the Dynamic Duo, but he actually picked up his first multi-point game with the Oilers. I don’t know that having him up on the first line is any kind of long-term solution, but this trio certainly worked today.

Even though no one is expecting Perry to be the guy who scored 50 and won the Hart Trophy, what’s clear through his first stretch of games with the Oilers is that his hands are still pretty good, and so is his processor. Slower than you’d probably want to be beside Connor McDavid, Perry still found a way to be in the right spot more often than not, and that hockey IQ led him to score his second goal in as many games from basically the same spot.

PUCK WATCHING IS HURTING THE OILERS LATELY

I can’t be the only one to notice how often the Oilers have gotten caught puck-watching, can I? On Dallas’ first two goals, they had a man find a soft spot in coverage, with no one on the Oilers seemingly noticing until the puck was in the back of the net. It’s like their controllers temporarily disconnect in the defensive zone, leaving their opponent to move the puck around as they please.

Who knows where this disconnect came from, but this issue where the boys lose their man in coverage has happened way too often over the last week. I know that those two early lapses didn’t end up costing them the win, but those are details that have to get cleaned up in short order. I think Knoblauch and Coffey should make the boys wear shock collars, and they get a healthy zap any time they’re not keeping their head on a swivel. It’s frustrating to watch because they’re so much better than that.

OTHER THINGS WORTH MENTIONING…