The Oilers made their bed by not addressing obvious deficiencies in goal
Did you expect anything different, Edmonton Oilers?
You’ve been tall enough to ride this rollercoaster for years now. You know what Stuart Skinner is. And that means understanding you can’t predict what he’ll do on any given shot, in any given minute, period, game, week, month or year.
Phillip Danault’s knuckleball winner in the third period of Monday’s Game 1, after the Oilers had rallied from a 4-0 deficit and tied the Los Angeles Kings 5-5, was a killer. It’s clear Skinner didn’t see the fluttering puck, screened by former teammate Warren Foegele, but it was the sixth goal Skinner surrendered on 30 shots that night. If you don’t want to blame the Danault tally, there was the long-range one-timer from Kevin Fiala that Skinner saw all the way, and the bank shot from Quinton Byfield. The highlight tape wasn’t kind to Skinner.
And Oilers fans have every right to be incensed about that – not even at Skinner himself, but at the fact he was in the net at all, when the sample size has long been large enough to tell us he’s not The Guy. Two seasons ago, he was pulled four times in just two playoff rounds as a rookie. Last season, he was benched for Calvin Pickard midway through the Oilers’ run to the Stanley Cup Final only to take back the crease.
If you prefer to analyze a larger sample size, here are Skinner’s save percentages by month in his regular-season NHL career to date, excluding months where he played a single game:
.928
.899
.854
.955
.893
.921
.897
.897
.908
.951
.863
.888
.915
.953
.887
.917
.893
.872
.898
.913
.921
.867
.873
.972
Good luck predicting where that roulette wheel will stop every time Skinner takes up the crease. Also, he’s started 36 career playoff games and posted a save percentage south of .900 in 19 of them.
So why, then, was he manning the Oilers’ net in Game 1? I’m not referring to coach Kris Knoblauch making the wrong choice between Skinner and Calvin Pickard. The latter is a serviceable backup goaltender who has had his moments, even during the playoffs, but he hasn’t separated himself from Skinner. Among 61 goaltenders who played at least 20 games this season, Skinner sat 41st in goals saved above expected per 60, but Pickard was 51st.
No, the problem is that Skinner and Pickard are the options at all. Skinner struggled in the 2023 playoffs but was a rookie, so it’s understandable why the Oilers gave him more leash, but he wasn’t reliable during the 2024 run, either. One could argue, “They still got to within one win of the Stanley Cup with Skinner and Pickard,” but I turn that around and say, you missed the Stanley Cup by one win with Skinner and Pickard.
Plenty of factors worked against interim GM Jeff Jackson, new GM Stan Bowman and the Oilers front office in terms of pursuing upgrades this offseason, sure. The summer goalie market actually was robust, with big names like Linus Ullmark, Jacob Markstrom and first-round opponent Darcy Kuemper changing teams, but the Oilers were being careful with their cap space, preparing to extend superstar center Leon Draisaitl and, eventually, generational icon Connor McDavid and top blueliner Evan Bouchard. They couldn’t mess around with chasing, say, a John Gibson if his team wasn’t willing to retain half of a $6.4 million cap hit for three more seasons – and Gibson’s game was in a low place a year ago.
But what was the excuse for not addressing the net during this season? Look at what the Colorado Avalanche and GM Chris MacFarland did. They weren’t happy with Alexandar Georgiev and Justus Annunen’s play early on, so they went out and got Mackenzie Blackwood and Scott Wedgewood, not letting an acquisition cost including prospect Nikolai Kovalenko and a second-round pick deter them from their goal of pursuing a Stanley Cup this season. Colorado got some of the best goaltending in the league out of their new tandem from that point onward. The Oilers got some of the weakest overall goaltending in the NHL all season. It was reported approaching the Trade Deadline that Gibson, having a tremendous bounce-back year with the Anaheim Ducks, was willing to waive his no-trade clause to become an Oiler, but the Oilers insisted they weren’t interested in chasing a goalie, opting instead to upgrade at areas they considered higher in priority, acquiring Trent Frederic as a bottom-six center and Jake Walman as a top-four defenseman.
It was a seller’s market at the Deadline, so perhaps the Oilers didn’t want to overpay for Gibson or Utah Hockey Club’s Karel Vejmelka, who ended up signing an extension the day before the Deadline. But when you have McDavid and Draisaitl, the two greatest playoff performers this century: there are no excuses, even if you’re worrying about potentially having to fit Evander Kane’s cap hit in, which was a consideration. You can’t walk into a postseason as a true Stanley Cup contender with a team that finished 19th in save percentage at .897 this season – especially after the same two netminders gave you just a .904 combined mark the season before and a .902 postseason SV% during your run to Game 7 of the Final.
It was glaringly obvious that the Oilers needed to improve their goaltending even it meant getting creative with their cap space, and they failed to do it. The letdown of Game 1, in which they controlled 54.67 percent of the 5-on-5 expected goals and still lost, is on the front office. They’ve made their bed.
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