If there’s a given with hockey fans, it’s this:
When a puck finds its way into their team’s net, they’re critiquing it.
“Should have stopped that. Bad goal.”
“Man, all those early goals, putting the team in a hole.”
“Are we always out-goalied?”
It doesn’t matter that the Edmonton Oilers are leading the Pacific Division or that they’ve been on a three-month surge, playing .700 hockey. Or that the team’s needs should lean more to a top-six scoring winger for Leon Draisaitl or a top-four defenceman with some heft and aggression. Instead, Oilers fans, or a loud segment, want a better goalie than Stuart Skinner or somebody to put more pressure on him than Calvin Pickard when Skinner stumbles.
A trade midseason now for another Oilers goalie seems a total reach — we’re not talking 2006, when GM Kevin Lowe had two guys, Ty Conklin and Jussi Markkanen, he was lukewarm on so he dealt for Dwayne Roloson, and hit a home run with a team that made it to the eighth seed in the West.
But, no matter that Skinner has been very good since the end of October or that GM Stan Bowman is on record as saying he’s happy with his net play. The fans want John Gibson from Anaheim, and so does Pittsburgh. Or how about that UFA Karel Vejmelka in Utah?
So, as we dig into an Oilers mailbag, here’s some of those questions from fans.
Q: Would be wild if Skinner for Gibson was the base of a deal hahaha … the meltdown would be insane until Gibson won us a Cup behind that defence. (Brad Lauder).
A: Do I think Skinner could be more consistent, or maybe steal more games? Yes. His history is he starts seasons and playoff series slowly and gets better. When the team plays well in front of him, so does he. When the team stumbles, he sometimes goes along for the ride, like most NHL goalies. He has an .879 save percentage in first periods of games, clearly bad stuff.
But he’s been on a heater for three months, he just turned 26 just three months ago (hardly over the hill). He was shaky in the Vancouver series last spring when Pickard jumped to the rescue, but Skinner rebounded. He absolutely stole Game 6 of the Western final against Dallas last spring here, outplaying Jake Oettinger. If it goes to Game 7 in Texas, the Oilers probably don’t make it to the final.
I keep coming back to what Scotty Bowman, the greatest coach of them all, says about Cup winners. “You don’t need a great goalie to win, you just need a good one.” Skinner is just that.
Bowman won with Hall of Famers Ken Dryden and Dominik Hasek, but he also won with Chris Osgood in Detroit. Chicago won with Corey Crawford, Washington with Darcy Kuemper, Vegas with Adin Hill, Pittsburgh with Matt Murray, St. Louis with Jordan Binnington. Certainly good, but not great goalies.
Gibson beat the Oilers in the infamous 2017 Ducks-Oiler playoff series. His name has been out there on the trade carousel for years, especially loud in his hometown Pittsburgh. He’s bounced back, at .915 save percentage in 23 games, after two very iffy years with the Ducks. The younger Lukas Dostal outplayed him for the first few months of the season on a lottery-pick team. Gibson is certainly competitive, like Jonathan Quick-competitive. He’s good, but he’s been hurt or out often in his career. He’s only 31 with runway left but hasn’t played a single playoff game in seven years.
Is he a certain upgrade on Skinner?
I don’t think so. We also have to look at team chemistry in-season. I’m not so sure the Oilers players — read Connor McDavid-Draisaitl — would think Gibson is clearly better than the hugely popular and good Skinner-Pickard duo.
Gibson may want to go to a team where he’s the No. 1 at his age. Unless he’s traded straight up for Skinner, sorry, but that’s not going to happen here. It’ll be a 1 and 1a situation. Pickard, with a 26-12-1 record over two years with the Oilers, and another year on his contract, would have to be going to the Ducks, along with something significant (second-round draft or a prospect). The Ducks, as we all know, would have to eat 40 to 50 per cent of his $6.4 million AAV for a trade now to fit it into the squeezed Oiler cap and for the two more years.
Q: To EDM: Karel Vejmelka, 50 per cent retained ($1.3625m). To Utah: Pickard and a third in 2025 which is STL’s pick from the Dylan Holloway offer sheet. (Klima’s Lid).
A: First things first. Utah has no salary retention spots open. They’re using their allotted three for Zack Kassian, Oliver Ekman-Larsson and Patrik Nemeth on their buyouts so would have to bring in a third party to eat some of Vejmelka’s contract.
The UFA Vejmelka, 28, is having a bounce-back season, for sure, but he has a 57-90-15 record in the NHL in 174 games and a .900 career save percentage. He’s never played a single playoff game and faced that pressure.
He has a better save percentage than Skinner on a much worse team, .909 to .900, so there’s that, and maybe he would be more of a 1 and 1a than Pickard, a 50-50 competition, rather than Skinner playing two out of every three now as much as Pickard has been very good. But as 1 and 1a’s here, we’re not talking Grant Fuhr and Andy Moog, folks.
And, maybe a few let’s-get-off-the-goalie-train questions.
Q: Thoughts on Jake Evans as the forward addition at the trade deadline. (Terrance Grise)
A: The 29-year-old UFA Evans is having a career year (don’t they always in a contract year). He’s gone from being a fourth-line, excellent penalty killer in Montreal, to playing higher up the ladder. If he was a right-shot centre rather than a left like, say, Nick Bjugstad and Sam Carrick — two Oilers trade-deadline pickups in the past — he would fill a needed hole because all they have is lefties. But, Evans is still attractive, depending on the asset or assets going back.
Montreal may be trying to expand any trade talk to include winger Joel Armia for a first-rounder. Like San Jose, who moved Cody Ceci and Mikael Granlund, two UFAs, to Dallas earlier this month. The Oilers did give up a first-rounder last trade deadline for Adam Henrique and Carrick but Henrique is an established player, who will hit 1,000 games before it’s all said and done.
The Oilers don’t have their first-rounder this June, they gave it up to Philly to draft Sam O’Reilly, to trade and unless Oilers move their 2026 first-rounder in what appears to be a deeper draft, a second-rounder, the one they got for Blues signing Philip Broberg to the offer sheet, that’s as high as they’ll go for role players.
Q: Beau Akey, Matvey Petrov, a 1st and a 3rd, a roster player to CBJ for (winger) Mathieu Olivier and (defenceman) Damon Severson. (DepressionandBadKnees_37).
A: Sorry, not in a million years. Olivier, 28, is the toughest player in the league, a punching machine. He’s also killed penalties in Columbus and has a career-high 10 goals in a contract year. He could be a fourth-liner here, I suppose, as a rental, but unless you are guaranteed to sign Olivier in the summer, why bother? And the Blue Jackets and their fans like him, a lot.
Severson here? No way. There’s a better chance Blue Jackets buy out the right-shot D. He’s two years into an eight-year contract with a $6.25m AAV, with a lukewarm first season and he’s been a healthy scratch twice this season. The Jersey Devils Severson was good. This model? He’s a borderline second-pairing guy.
The right-shot Akey, who made Canada’s world junior team but didn’t play much at Christmas, is the Oilers best defence prospect, still playing junior in Barrie in the OHL. A third-rounder? Sure. Giving up Petrov, a B prospect in the organization? Yes. But a roster player, even a bottom sixer, as well? Forget it.