The Oilers needed Stuart Skinner to step up in Game 4, and he delivered

The Edmonton Oilers defeated the Vegas Golden Knights 3-0 Monday night, taking a 3-1 lead in their best-of-seven second-round series. Stuart Skinner led the way in net with a 23-save performance, his first win nearly a month, and while Calvin Pickard remains injured, it’s Skinner who will have to lead this team through the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk discuss Skinner’s impact on Game 4 and the Oilers’ goaltending going forward.

Tyler Yaremchuk: It was kind of funny to read the narratives that Oilers fan had going into Game 4. “This is the biggest game of Skinner’s career” – whoa whoa whoa, he started Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. But there was pressure on Skinner last night, and while the 23 shots he faced wasn’t a lot, he stopped the Tomas Hertl breakaway, he shut down the Golden Knights’ three power plays. He turned it all aside and gets full marks for his effort last night.

Frank Seravalli: Honestly? There was pressure on the whole Oilers team. Think about how Game 3 ended, in spectacularly bad fashion. They were that close to being up 3-0, then you flip Game 4 around and the Oilers are in big trouble heading back to Vegas tied 2-2.

This was a massive rubber-meets-the-road moment for Edmonton. “Are we going to make life easy on ourselves?” The Oilers rarely ever do that, and they didn’t do that in the first round. Or are the Oilers going to get greedy and put a skate to the throat of the Golden Knights, a team that has their own Stanley Cup pedigree?

I thought that was the (Oilers’) most mature performance that we’ve seen over the last couple playoff runs.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…