When it comes to life experiences, Stuart Skinner is aging in dog years, having already crammed more into two seasons than a lot of goalies do in a lifetime.
So far in his brief career he’s been nominated for the Calder Trophy, played in the NHL All-Star Game, signed a three-year, $7.8 million contract, played 35 playoff games and went to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final.
While a lot of goalies at his age are still trying to get a foot in the door, he’s charged with holding open a Stanley Cup window.
He’s already saved an Oilers season, jumping into a ready or not situation and playing 50 games as a rookie in 2022-23 when Jack Campbell’s Magical Misery Tour reached full volume.
He’s already had to get up off the canvas twice — early last season when he and Campbell both hit the skids, and again in the playoffs when he stumbled in the second round against Vancouver and Calvin Pickard had to take over.
Both times, with Edmonton’s season hanging in the balance, he fought back like a grizzled veteran and took back the net. He posted the third most wins by an Oilers goalie in franchise history (36) and even broke Grant Fuhr’s single season record for most consecutive wins in a season (12).
Going to be doubters
So he’s been there and done that on just about every front there is, and he took his team farther in the post-season last year than every other goalie in the league except one, but when people are rating the best goaltenders in the NHL, Edmonton’s guy is consistently ranked in the middle of the pack.
Until he gets this team over the hump and wins that final playoff game of the season, there are always going to be the doubters.
That’s fine with Skinner. He’s not in this for the recognition and if he ever does win that final playoff game of the season recognition won’t really matter because he’ll already have a ring.
And so begins another quest. The expectations for the Oilers are now so obvious they don’t even need to be spoken, but they are fully understood by all. And the 25-year-old, now entering his third full season in the NHL, is once again at the centre of everything. He says he is ready to put that lifetime of experience to work in this do or die season.
“We want to do a little bit better than we did last year,” he said after Oilers medicals prior to the first day of training camp Thursday. “It’s going to be really tough and you have to go through that whole process again leading up to the playoffs. It’s a long year. There are going to be lots of ups and downs and the way that we handle that is going to be key for us.
“You can’t really look back at last year and expect that to happen again this year. We have expectations of how we want to perform but this year is a completely different year. We have a different team. Every team in the NHL is different.”
‘Incredible lesson’
Step one is shaking off the Game 7 defeat and finding a way to be better for having lived it.
“I would like to think that I got over it quickly but I probably didn’t,” said Skinner, whop stopped 19 of 21 shots in that Game 7 loss in Florida. “But that’s just the nature of being a human being, going through something like that. It’s such an incredible lesson learned and an incredible experience to go through. I’m very fortunate.”
He says they all are. As much as it hurt at the time, and still does, Skinner believe it might be the final push, the final lesson, they needed.
“We got to experience a very tough loss, a loss that we’ve been thinking about for the whole summer. You use that loss. Just to be able to experience that game, going through a Game 7 with all that energy and all that noise, just the whole deal of it, is pretty amazing.
“Now, if we ever get to experience it again, obviously we’re hoping to experience that again this year, we already know how it feels. Taking a nap before Game 7 you’re not going to be as wound up as you were last time. Being able to go through it is so important because now you know how to deal with it when it comes to you again.”
But nobody knows better than the Oilers how long the highway is between here and another Stanley Cup Final. All Skinner and his teammates can do is buckle down and get ready for the grind because, as recent history has also taught all of them, looking ahead to April will only get you bitten hard in October.
“I learned a little bit of that last year, and even the year before. I’ve had experience trying to balance those things out. The big thing are those little details, getting your sleep, eating right, not wasting your energy on the silly stuff. A lot of it is going to be how you take care of your body, take care of your mind. So many things that go into it. We start over, we’re back at day one, you learn that process every year and hopefully I learn it really quickly this year.”
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