Boucher looking for a shot
… And for a winger who really has one, it’s strange Canucks won’t comply
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Reid Boucher was on waivers three times in the space of a month.
That’s some treatment for the player who broke Steven Stamkos’s single-season goal-scoring record with the Sarnia Sting by potting 62 goals in his OHL days.
But scoring goals has never been a problem. Staying with an NHL team has. Go figure — you’d think teams that can’t score would be into players who can.
Nice things were expected for Boucher to start this season. The Michigan native recently turned 23 years old and was coming off a season in which he put up 19 points in 39 games for the New Jersey Devils in a 2015-16 campaign split between the NHL and AHL’s Albany Devils. To put it in perspective, Markus Granlund is the same age and was drafted in the same year. He had 21 points in his first 53 games with the Canucks and people keep talking about how surprisingly good and productive he’s been.
With the NHL Devils, however, Boucher found himself in the doghouse to start this season. The left-winger hardly played and by early December New Jersey put him on waivers the first time. The Devils were hoping to get him to the AHL for playing time.
Enter the Nashville Predators. After claiming Boucher, the Preds sent him to the AHL for a conditioning stint. He did what he usually does. He scored goals, four in five games with the Milwaukee Admirals.
Nashville recalled him, and he scored for the Preds in his second game with them. After his third, he was back on waivers again.
Here’s where it really gets odd: the Devils claimed Boucher again, and by rule got him back. But they knew there was at least one other team that had put in a claim. Because of the other claim, New Jersey still couldn’t send Boucher to the AHL without having him clear waivers first.
So they put him back on waivers, understanding they would lose him again because they knew another team was interested, presumably the Vancouver Canucks.
The Canucks did get him on waivers and then played him just six minutes in the next five weeks, and only started him Thursday after Sven Baertschi was forced out of the lineup with a concussion.
All of this must have been incredibly challenging mentally for a player many thought was a lock to play in the Devils’ bottom six all season.
Boucher has at least been able to see the positives in this experience.
“Teams pick you up because they want you,” Boucher said. “It’s a good sign. Teams believe you’re an NHL player. My mindset has been positive the whole year.”
The Canucks have suggested Boucher needed to get in better shape, even comparing his arrival to Vancouver to the experience Nikita Tryamkin went through at the start of the year, when he was kept out of the lineup so he could lose weight.
“I think Boucher has been on the same program,” head coach Willie Desjardins said.
“I like Boucher. He can certainly shoot a puck.”
Yes, that’s what just about anyone who has seen him says about him. In the 11 games leading up to Thursday, the Canucks scored just 20 goals and that was last in the NHL.
It’s not like Boucher will get a ton of chances to use that shot playing on the fourth line. But Desjardins is deploying him on the second power-play unit, putting Boucher in a similar situation to that of Columbus’s Sam Gagner.
“My shot is something I’ve always had,” Boucher said. “But I’ve worked to get it better and better as the years go on. In terms of bringing something to the game, I think I can be an offensive guy for this team.”
Good thing for the Canucks if that’s true, because they could really use a guy like that.