EDMONTON — We talk a lot in Edmonton about the importance of defencemen who can get pucks to Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl — quickly and on the tape.

A high-calibre outlet pass is like oxygen for hockey’s top players. Without it, they choke.

But guess what? Don Jackson has left the building.

It’s not like the fan bases in other NHL towns are looking for off-the-glass D-men who are holdovers from 1984.

“Every team’s got star players,” said D.J. Smith, the associate coach in charge of Edmonton defensive corps. “Now, our star players are some of the league’s best — if not the best — but it doesn’t change. The top players want the puck.”

Smith has been around now, from a gig as Mike Babcock’s assistant with the Toronto Maple Leafs, to five years as a head coach in Ottawa, to a couple of years with the Los Angeles Kings. He’s heard and seen more than most.

“When (Artemi) Panarin got traded to L.A., he’s got to get a guy to get him the puck (Drew Doughty). When I was in Ottawa, (Tim) Stutzle and (Brady) Tkachuk and (Drake) Batherson — they needed a guy to get them the puck, which was (Thomas) Chabot. So wherever you go, the top guys are only open for a brief second. If you hold on to the puck too long and you can’t move pucks, the big guys don’t get the puck.”

Here in Edmonton, Evan Bouchard is the one who starts plays in the right direction. He’s already played 54 minutes with McDavid in three games, and the reason for that is simple: He’s very good at the job.

Through three games Bouchard has averaged 25:41 of ice time per game — 20:09 at even strength. There are likely 15 teams that would kill for a legitimate No. 1 defenceman who can handle those minutes at anything close to the level Bouchard plays at — principally because they do not have even a reasonable facsimile.

“Bouch is a guy that can effortlessly play 27 minutes,” Smith said, “and a lot of his minutes are in the O-zone and on the power play. They’re not heavy-lifting minutes. But you can’t have two guys play all the minutes and the other four watch, that’s not what we came here (for). We came here to build a team.

“We’ve got to build a hockey team and not just five guys or four guys or three guys.”

As Smith acclimatizes himself with a D-corps that has been front and centre of a team whose defensive play needs work, project No. 1 revolves around who should play with Bouchard.

Mattias Ekholm, who arrived as the perfect No. 2 and played shift-for-shift alongside the 26-year-old Bouchard for the past four seasons, is now 36. Ekholm can still play, but not 25 minutes a night against the other team’s top units.

It was general manager Stan Bowman’s wish, as soon as last season came to its merciful conclusion, to find a way to take a few minutes off of Ekholm’s average game as he enters a very team-friendly three-year contract that pays him $4 million annually.

But without another No. 2 walking through the door in Edmonton, we wondered how that might happen.

What we’ve seen is Smith stealing a few shifts from Ekholm throughout the course of a game.

“There are probably five shifts a game, maybe more, that (Ryan Shea) goes with Bouch. Or Wally (Jake Walman) gets a shift with Bouch. Or it’s four-on-four and Shea goes with Bouch, and Ecky goes against the top line with Murph (Connor Murphy).

“As you as you age in this league, your value is in different areas,” Smith said. “Ecky and Murph, you put them out there at the last minute of the game? They’re as hard to score on as anyone in the league. So when you get down the last five minutes, is it Shea and Bouch and Ecky and Murph?”

Lost in this is Walman, who has not started the season like he is part of Smith’s solution.

We know what Bouchard is, and at 26 he can still be expected to improve. We know what Ekholm is, and that Murphy is a classic No. 4.

Shea has shown an ability to play next to Bouchard and trade pucks with McDavid and Draisaitl, but he is not what we would call a prototypical No. 2 defenceman. He’s not Brent Seabrook, who so perfectly complimented Duncan Keith, or the rugged Ekholm, who was perfect in his younger 30s next to Bouchard.

But perhaps it is us who have to change our stereotypes. Maybe a big, burly guy who “protects” your No. 1 is just yesterday’s thinking.

“I still like guys who flat out scare you to death. That’s not a bad thing to have, you know?” Babcock said on Monday. “So being big, being long, boxing out hard, being ultra-competitive, and if you can move the puck at the same time, that’s a special thing.”

That’s a fair ask, but simply not realistic in today’s game. Today, if you can’t skate, you can’t play.

“That’s fair,” points out Smith. “But if you can’t defend, you can’t play either.

“The position has really evolved, because you can’t defend if you can’t skate. The players are so good, in order to defend them you’ve got to be able to skate. Before, there was a lot more hooking and holding. You can’t get away with that, and you can’t afford to be in the penalty box all the time.”

It’s a work in progress, and perhaps the Oilers will be in the market for the right defenceman come March.

But for now, D.J. Smith has some talent with which to work.

And some time to figure it all out.