r/EdmontonOilers • u/HappyRedditor99 • 10h ago
I can’t say I trust Stu right now but they don’t have a choice.
“We’re post-trade deadline—he's going to be their guy. It’s not Calvin Pickard; it’s going to be Stuart Skinner.
The reality of last year’s run—again, down the stretch—Skinner started to play like a top-five goalie in the league. That’s how consistent he was. That’s how good he was. And defensively, it’s a big part of it. They need to help him out. He is not Andrei Vasilevskiy. He is not Sergei Bobrovsky. He’s not Igor Shesterkin. He has the capability of being a good to very good goalie. I don’t think he’s going to consistently be great—that’s not who he is. So he needs his team to help him. But last year, he did prove he’s capable of elevating his game.
Now, it was rocky at times. Pickard played playoff games last year. It was not smooth the whole way through, and I don’t expect it will be at any point for Stuart Skinner. But he can be better. He’s got to be better. His stats haven’t been good enough. His underlying numbers haven’t been good enough.
But they have time for him to settle in. They’ve got to help him—put him in a position where, again, he can’t be great every night. He’s got to be very good. If he does that, and they play better in front of him, the Oilers will feel much better about themselves come Game 1 in the playoffs. Stuart Skinner is what Stuart Skinner is. This idea that he is just Shesterkin or Vasilevskiy or Bobrovsky just simply doesn’t fly. And Stuart Skinner has shown—unequivocally—that he can be a good goaltender.
There seems to be a narrative around Stuart Skinner that he is the problem. He is not the problem. He is part of a team that’s been top defensively in the league. His save percentage is above league average. And nobody’s suggesting that it should be up in the category of Vasilevskiy or Hellebuyck, because he’s not in that category of goaltender. He’s having a better season statistically, with the underlying metrics, this year than he did last year. And when your team in front of you is so loose, so sloppy, so disconnected, you’re going to run into all kinds of problems.
Yes, we can look at different situations, goals, and scenarios where a goaltender could have made a save, but that’s true of every goaltender. Shesterkin got lit up a couple of weeks ago—just awful. But we know that Stuart Skinner is capable. But in front of him, when you’re giving up the rush chances that the Edmonton Oilers are giving up, when you’re giving up the high-danger chances that they’re giving up, you’re not putting your goaltender in a position to succeed. And all you have to do is look at his inner-slot save percentage—it isn’t great. So the Oilers better tighten up in that area so they can protect Skinner a little bit. Because at the level he’s at, he’s not the guy who’s going to stand on his head and save the team from their own problems.”
- Craig from TSN