Yesterday afternoon, the OHL announced that Evan Bouchard is this year’s recipient of the Max Kaminsky Trophy which is awarded annually to the league’s Most Outstanding Defenceman for 2018-19.

Each year, the Max Kaminsky Trophy is awarded to the league’s best defenceman as selected by the OHL General Managers and it was Evan Bouchard that got the call in 2018-19. Before selecting a winner, all 20 teams first submit a nominee for the award, but are not permitted to vote on the player from their own team, eliminating biased voting as much as possible. Bouchard will be presented with the trophy at the OHL Awards Ceremony which takes place June 5th at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. With this win, Bouchard becomes the sixth Knight to win the award and first since Danny Syvret did it back in 2004-05, which is a nice finish to what was a fantastic junior career.

It’s been a wild season for the former 10th overall pick as he got a taste at every level of hockey that he could. After cracking the Oilers’ lineup to start the season, Bouchard was returned to the London Knights with the expectation that he would pick up where he left off. Despite a slow-ish start upon his return, Bouchard went on to record 53 points (16G, 37A) in 45 games which gave him 1.18 points-per-game, the second highest total in the OHL. He was also the only defenceman to average more than four shots on goal per game, and that trigger happy attitude is something that will definitely endear him to Oilers fans upon his arrival.

Over the course of his four seasons in London, Bouchard played in 223 games and amassed 54 goals and 147 assists for 201 points which put him in second place all time for points by a Knights defenceman (Rich Carriveau is number one). Outside of London, Bouchard also represented Canada at the 2019 World Junior Championship and Team OHL at the Canada/Russia Series. Upon completion of his OHL season, Bouchard was assigned to the Bakersfield Condors where he had a very impressive debut, scoring one goal and adding two assists in Tuesday night’s win over the Colorado Eagles.