Bourgault had an up-and-down season with Bakersfield last year and a lot of the down parts related to his size and strength relative to the players he was up against. Now that is ok. This is why the AHL exists. Teams want to put their young players there and let them sort through the development path they need to follow on their way to the NHL.

For Bourgault, he likely learned two things: he needs to get stronger and he needs to skate with more of a forward tilt and a wider base. The great news is that these are areas of improvement that are not unusual for young pros and they are certainly within his ability to improve upon.

As can been seen, Bourgault also had challenges scoring, which was his calling card in junior. Again, a lot of that can be attributed to what I talked about above, but there is reason to be optimistic here. While Bourgault finished 185th in AHL scoring. Only 16 players his age or younger had his point totals. In addition, Bourgault played on a dreadful offensive team which finished 24th out of 32 teams, and he also missed time with a concussion that impacted his season. Finally, for the first half of the season, Bourgault, as well as all the other rookies, laboured under a very challenging coaching environment. An environment that says young players’ ice time is limited and mistakes are punished quite harshly. These eased up in the second half and that led to better results. Indeed, as Bourgault has 11 points in his last 14 games of the season.

Make no mistake Bourgault has NHL-level offensive skills. His puck skills are sublime.

In addition, his vision inside the offensive zone is very strong.

Bourgault also has no qualms about defending. He works very hard and has a great stick. He actually played a surprising amount on the penalty kill this past season and he was very effective.

This is really important because this is an area of the game that young, offensive skills players usually struggle with. Not Bourgault. He seems to relish the challenge.

His effort level is also pretty consistent at the high end. He does not lack enthusiasm to chase the puck.

No question, Xavier Bourgault had a tougher first pro year than many of us expected. He certainly needs to work on some elements of his game that will surely help him develop. However, his season was not all bad. There was good in there that should be encouraging to Oiler fans. I expect a really big improvement from Bourgault this season and should that be the case, there is an opportunity on the right side of a skill line for him in Edmonton.

Previously in the countdown

• 2022 list
• #20 — Carl Berglund
• #19 — Filip Engaras
• #18 — Joel Määttä
• #17 — Ryan Fanti
• #16 — Shane Lachance
• #15 — Olivier Rodrigue
• #14 — Maxim Beryozkin
• #13 — Nikita Yevseyev
• #12 — Jake Chiasson
• #11 — Luca Munzenberger
• #10 — Carter Savoie
• #9 — Jayden Grubbe
• #8 — Maximus Wanner
• #7 – Tyler Tullio
• #6 — James Hamblin
• #5 – Phil Kemp
• #4 – Matvey Petrov