Since Ken Holland took over as the GM of the Oilers, the team has been looking for an upgrade in goal. However, despite reported efforts to make a change in each offseason, Holland has run with Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen in each of his 3 seasons at the helm, with middling results any way you look at it.
Enter Stuart Skinner. The Oilers traded up in the 2017 Draft to draft Skinner 78th Overall, sending picks 82 and 126 to Arizona in return. Skinner was playing for the Lethbridge Hurricanes at the time, working as their starter since his 16-year-old season. In his D+1 season and final year of junior, Skinner was traded to the contending Swift Current Broncos, where he went 16-8-2 with a .932 SV% on route to a WHL Championship which included outdueling Carter Hart in the final. Graduating to pro, Skinner looked like a legit prospect by the numbers.
Skinner’s first pro season was uneven, spending more time in Wichita ECHL than he did with Bakersfield AHL with underwhelming results. The next season was more of the same, although he gained a larger start share in Bakersfield with Shane Starrett having chronic injury issues.
It was at this time where the narrative around Skinner started to shift to a goalie that had plateaued. The Edmonton native had consistently been the best goalie in his league growing up, but the transition to pro had exposed flaws in his game that some were concerned wouldn’t be rectified. However, the next season would be a turning point for Skinner.
Mike Smith would get hurt before playing a game, leaving Skinner as Mikko Koskinen’s backup while he played every game. Skinner would finally make his NHL debut on January 31st against Ottawa. Skinner would allow 5 goals in the 8-5 victory, briefly detailed below.
Makes the first 2 saves but gets caught chasing outside his point and has the puck banked off of him.
Tkachuk cuts to the middle, Skinner loses sight for a split second and can’t pick up the short side glove shot.
Skinner is deep on the PP shot from Batherson. Oilers D are supposed to fill the farside lane to leave the short side for the goalie, but Skinner is deep and slightly far side so he gets beat short side glove.
Skinner blows his angle, leaving far side glove for Stuezle to shoot at. Similar to the Tkachuk goal, Skinner reacts to a block then tries to chase out.
Skinner never sees the point shot as there’s 4 bodies directly in front of him.
Needless to say, Skinner struggled. But both he and goalie coach Dustin Schwartz recognized, as outlined during his conversation with InGoal Mag. As a result, Skinner was able to make adjustments, narrowing his stance and improving his tracking which would allow him to be more agile and keep up with the faster pace of play.
That Ottawa game would be Skinner’s only game of the season, returning to Bakersfield once Mike Smith was healthy. He would go on to have a strong season with the Condors, becoming Bakersfield’s undisputed number 1 goalie, leading them to a Pacific Division Championship with a .913 SV%.
After a strong preseason, Skinner was once assigned to Bakersfield behind the Smith-Koskinen tandem. Smith got hurt in the 3rd game of the season, necessitating Skinner’s presence as Koskinen’s backup. He got into his first game on November 11th. I broke down his game here:
His second game came two days later in Buffalo:
His next two appearances would both come against the Jets. The first came in relief in Winnipeg before stealing the second game at home in a 2-1 shootout win where he stopped 46 of 47. The only goal in that game was a tough situation in itself.
His next start would come on a Saturday night against Chicago in a 5-2 win. Goal 1 was a fantastic Dach tip in the trailing seconds. The second goal was a 2-0 off a PP where he didn’t have much of a chance. Overall, Skinner was excellent once again and had yet to have a bad appearance through 5 stints in the net.
Skinner’s next start would come against Dallas, broken down below:
Net-front tip on the PP
Cross-ice one timer on the PP
Partial break beats him five hole
Shot going wide is redirected in while screened.
There were more goals against in this game, but looking at the tape, Dallas was clearly the better team, with Skinner making a number of royal road saves to keep the Oilers in it. Skinner’s next start in Seattle would be his worst of the season.
Skinner wouldn’t be bad in his next game against Boston, but there were some technical issues that led to the 3-2 loss.
Skinner would win his next two starts, giving up two goals on shots going off his blocker side, with the first coming on a tip against Columbus while the win in Seattle is detailed below
Bad goal that beats him through his blocker arm.
Back door pass beats him to his blocker side
Seattle shoots for the rebound off the backboards and Skinner can’t recover back to his blocker post in time.
At this point in time, the Oilers would run into Covid issues, being shutdown through the Christmas break. At the same time, Smith would be declared ready for game action so Skinner was returned to Bakersfield, where he went 4-0-2, including winning a start where he arrived to the rink 10 minutes before warm up due to travel issues.
This brings us to Saturday night against Ottawa, where Skinner didn’t give up a “bad” goal, but there were stoppable goals that the Oilers needed a save on.
So What Can We Expect?
Looking through the video Skinner has been great on cross-ice feeds to his blocker side and is generally pretty good at controlling rebounds. At times, his movements to his glove side can be lacking. Additionally, while tough chances for any goalie, Skinner seems particularly prone to goals on breakaways and on tips.
To me, Skinner seems like a solid NHL goalie. At this point, he’s not going to steal a ton of games, but on most nights he will give his team a chance to win. It does seem like Skinner will continue to improve, so there are plenty of reasons to believe in the Oilers will have their first homegrown goalie since Devan Dubnyk.
However, with this middle-of-the-pack type goalie, the defensive environment becomes a much larger driver of results than the goaltending itself. As NHL_Sid outlined, the Oilers would require 94th percentile goaltending by Goals Saved Above Expected in order to have a 50% goal share at 5 on 5. To put it simply, the Oilers would require top 4 goaltending to saw of at evens. Regardless of what one might think of the in-house options, they don’t have anyone that is comparable to the top tier of Shesterkin, Vasilevskiy, Hellebuyck, Markstrom, or Campbell. In fact, these goalies are almost always either drafted or are late-blooming top prospects.
Since his NHL debut last season, Stuart Skinner has turned a corner in his development. He has been relatively consistent this year, giving the Oilers a chance to win in most of his starts. Like any young goalie, Skinner has some areas he needs to clean up, but there is reason to believe he can contribute at the top level right now, growing into a larger starting role. In the meantime, cleaning up the Oilers defensive play through tactical and personnel changes seems like a much more pressing issue.