Canucks rally past Oilers in overtime despite Bouchard's five-point night

The Vancouver Canucks opened their season with a 6-5 overtime win over the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday night, overcoming a furious third-period comeback built around a rare three-goal game from Oilers defenseman Evan Bouchard to spoil Edmonton's home opener and the bench debut of new coach Mike Babcock.

Paul Cotter, playing his first game for Vancouver after signing as a free agent in the offseason, scored twice for the Canucks, including the winner 1:59 into overtime on a feed from Max Sasson. He had also opened the scoring with a shorthanded goal 10:09 into the first period, becoming the first player in Canucks history to score shorthanded in his debut with the team, according to the game's official box score and recap.

The numbers

According to Edmonton's own post-game account of the night, the game was tied twice in regulation before Vancouver pulled away. Marco Rossi, Jonathan Lekkerimäki, Max Sasson and Elias Pettersson scored in a span of less than nine minutes spanning the second and third periods to turn a 2-2 game into a 5-2 Canucks lead. Edmonton answered with three unanswered goals of its own in the final 11 minutes of regulation to force overtime. Vasily Podkolzin scored twice for the Oilers, sandwiched around Bouchard's third goal of the night, with the second coming on a power play with 42.5 seconds left on the clock. It was a pointed moment for Podkolzin, who began his North American career in the Canucks organization before moving on to Edmonton.

• Final: Vancouver 6, Edmonton 5 (OT), at Rogers Place in Edmonton
• Evan Bouchard: 3 goals, 2 assists, 5 points in 25:41 of ice time
• Paul Cotter: 2 goals (one shorthanded, one in overtime) on 3 shots
• Goaltenders: Kevin Lankinen (Vancouver) stopped 32 of 37 shots for the win; Tristan Jarry (Edmonton) stopped 17 of 23

Bouchard, a 26-year-old who was named an Edmonton assistant captain ahead of the season, scored at 3:34 of the first period, 14:36 of the second and 10:42 of the third, the last a snap shot through traffic that came off the crossbar and in. Captain Connor McDavid assisted on both Bouchard's second goal and his hat-trick marker, the two helpers accounting for McDavid's first points of the new season. It was, by any measure, the finest offensive night of Bouchard's career, coming off a 95-point campaign in 2025-26 that led all NHL defensemen and made him a finalist for the Norris Trophy. None of it was enough. Cotter's second goal, set up when Sasson fed him alone in front after a battle along the boards with Ryan Shea, ended it in the extra period.

Cotter arrived in Vancouver as a free agent this summer after two seasons with the New Jersey Devils. His shorthanded opener came when an Edmonton power-play attempt from Leon Draisaitl was blocked and fell to Cotter, who turned the broken play into a two-on-one and ripped a shot top shelf past Jarry to open his account as a Canuck.

New benches, new expectations

Tuesday's game carried extra weight for both franchises because of who was — and was not — running the bench. Babcock was hired by Edmonton on June 23 to replace Kris Knoblauch, who was fired in May, two weeks after the Oilers were eliminated by the Anaheim Ducks in the first round of the playoffs. It is Babcock's first NHL coaching job since he was fired by the Toronto Maple Leafs 23 games into the 2019-20 season, and the appointment drew public skepticism from former Oilers captain Mark Messier, now an ESPN analyst, who said he was "shocked" by the hire and questioned McDavid, Hyman and Leon Draisaitl meeting with Babcock before management brought him on. Both McDavid and Hyman said before camp that the arrangement had not created a divide between players and coaching staff, with Hyman noting that camp had generated more headlines about the coach than about any player.

Edmonton was already without center Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who was held out of the home opener lineup, a late absence that pushed Podkolzin into a bigger role alongside Leon Draisaitl.

Vancouver, for its part, is trying to rebuild under first-year coach Manny Malhotra, a former Canucks forward who reached the Stanley Cup Final with the club in 2011, after the team finished with the NHL's worst record a year ago at 25-49-8. Malhotra and general manager Ryan Johnson told reporters at the start of camp that this season would be judged less by the standings than by whether the team plays "the right way," with a roster built around younger players such as Sasson and Lekkerimäki alongside veterans Brendan Gallagher, Luke Schenn and Jamie Oleksiak.

What Bouchard said beforehand

Bouchard's outburst was, in one sense, a departure from what he had described as his priority for the season. Speaking at Rogers Place before training camp opened, he said the emphasis for him this year would be on tightening his own end of the ice rather than chasing more offense.

"When I'm out there, I think the offence will come, but most importantly, focus on the defensive side things first," Bouchard said.

Whatever his intentions, the offense arrived immediately: Bouchard finished the opening night of the season with more points than all but a handful of players leaguewide, even as his team lost.

What happens next

The result leaves Edmonton with a single point from a game in which the Oilers twice fought back from a deficit only to tie it, then trailed by three goals in the third period before forcing overtime — an uneven start for Babcock's opening night behind the bench. Vancouver, meanwhile, gets a statement result to open the Malhotra era, with younger forwards Sasson and Lekkerimäki both factoring into the scoring — Sasson with a goal and the primary assist on Cotter's overtime winner, Lekkerimäki with a third-period goal of his own. The two Pacific Division rivals do not have long to wait for a rematch: they meet again Thursday at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, the first of several meetings between the clubs this season.