Edmonton Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch is a patient man. The quiet-spoken bench boss has shown a strong tendency to stick with his core players through thick and thin, preferring the scalpel over the sledgehammer when he does decide to take corrective action.
Case in point, the oh-so-brief benching of Leon Draisaitl back in Game 4 of the season in response to the star forward’s early-season string of petulant penalties. The sitdown lasted all of 1½ shifts over a 5-minute span, and delivered the desired effect in both the short and long term.
Similarly, the coach has been reluctant to deviate from a goaltending rotation that seen Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard split the net on a consistent 2:1 share, with each man entrusted with the full 60 minutes when it was his turn. Or so it was for 53 consecutive games in which each netminder always finished what he started. The only exception to the long run of complete games was necessitated when Skinner was sent to the quiet room by the spotter after taking a blow to the head from massive Nikita Zadorov in Boston, only to return to the crease the next period to finish the job — a 4-0 “shared” shutout over the Bruins on Jan 07.
In recent times Knoblauch’s resolve has surely been tested, as Skinner has had persistent issues in the first periods of games. That bad run started, coincidentally enough, in the game following the shutout in Beantown. Four times, Skinner was beaten three times in the opening frame, in each case the first three goals of the game. Each time, despite the 0-3 hole, Knoblauch stuck with his #1. Each time, the stopper bounced back with a strong final 40 as his (also slow-starting) teammates found a way to make a game of it. In one instance, at Colorado on Jan 16, the Oilers came all the way back to pull out an unlikely 4-3 win.
But when Skinner again allowed a trio of first period tallies in the return match against the Avalanche three weeks later, Knoblauch’s patience ran out. Despite Skinner’s prior record of in-game bouncebacks, despite his two prior wins over the same opponent, despite his brilliant save off Cale Makar in the dying seconds of the first, and despite the deficit being just 3-2 on this occasion, the coach got out the hook at the end of the period. When the game resumed, there was Pickard between the pipes. Each team scored twice the rest of the way resulting in a 5-4 win for the visitors. While Pickard officially took the L, Skinner wore much of it.
Said the coach: “I don’t think [Skinner] had much opportunity on the third one, and made a nice save at the end of the period. But the first two, I felt like he could have had. And Picks has been winning us a lot of games, and we needed a little boost for our team. He has a pretty good record of late, and we felt he could come in and do the job.”
The timing of the switch was particularly notable. This wasn’t a five-minute benching in the middle of a game like Draisaitl’s, or the one Evan Bouchard endured that same night vs. the Avs, but a much stronger message. It was, after all, the last game before the break in NHL play for the 4 Nations Face-Off, leaving his starter a full two weeks to stew about his latest performance.
Make no mistake, though, it wasn’t just one bad start to a game, but the latest episode of several that finally drew the coach’s response. Let’s have a look at Skinner’s goals against by period in calendar 2025, a period that includes his last dozen starts.
Fair to say those 3+ GA periods stand out like sore thumbs, though I have added a little highlighting to further emphasize the point. First period, every time. In just two other frames — one second, one third — did he allow as many as 2 GA. Indeed, in a majority (18 of 34) of full periods the opposition didn’t score at all. Put another way, 16 goals against in the five highlighted periods, just 13 in the other 29 full frames plus a couple of overtimes.
Over the full span shown here, Skinner posted respectable “goalie boxcars” of 6-4-1, 2.59, .908 with a solid 5.5 Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx). But the down periods — literallly first periods — ultimately resulted in 4 regulation losses and just a single victory. No surprise then that Knoblauch suddenly had his fill of those poor starts, even as the timing of his move relative to the break raises some eyebrows.
Regular readers of the Cult of Hockey will have divined that I have been a staunch supporter of Edmonton’s starter, most recently in this post published on the morning of the Colorado game which focussed on the starter’s improving numbers over consecutive segments of the season. This in the face of mounting criticism across much of Oil Country, in which the erratic nature of his play has been a regular theme. The numbers shown above certainly support that criticism, so let’s take a deeper look.
The below summarizes the GSAx of each Oilers stopper through the first 55 games, as per Evolving Hockey.
Yellow backgrounds feature roughly “average” showings, where actual goals against are within +/- 1 of expected. Good games of >1 GSAx are highlighted in green, with “great” games of +2 or better bolded and boxed. Similarly, poor games in excess of -1 and -2 have red cells.
Season to date, the tendem has delivered almost exactly the “expected” number of stops, with Skinner about 5 goals to the good, Pickard roughly 4 to the bad.
Here’s the same data in graphic form, showing Skinner has been the more volatile of the two by some margin. His peaks are both higher and more frequent, but his smattering of poor performances similarly stand out on the lower half of the chart. Pickard by contrast has been the Steady Eddy.
Only in the first and last of those games is there data for both netminders, reflecting Knoblauch’s decision in each case to yank his starter. (Pickard faced zero shots in his brief relief appearance in Boston.) Oddly, both netminders delivered their worst performance of their entire season to date in their very first start.
Summarizing:
Both netminders have delivered more performances on the green side of the spectrum than the red, though Skinner alone has had several great games, at least by this definition. But he has also had a higher percentage of his starts land in the red, further evidence of the up-and-down nature of his game that has drawn (deserved) criticism from a growing number of skeptics. And, more significantly, the recent wake-up call from his coach.
Conclusions
This observer is ever mindful of what happened to the last goaltender actually drafted and developed by the Oilers, namely Devan Dubnyk, who was run out of town on a rail after a poor first half to the 2013-14 campaign. Dubnyk had posted excellent save percentages of .916, .914 and .920 in his three prior seasons before crashing to .891 in a campaign where everything went sideways for the then-27-year-old. He would bounce back the very next season to finish third in Vezina Trophy voting, the first of five straight excellent seasons with the Minnesota Wild.
Stu Skinner has experienced no such crash in his overall numbers, even as they are down slightly. Obviously, game-to-game consistency is a concern, and a growing one as the season extends into February.
Of the 32 NHL goaltenders to start at least 25 games to this point, Skinner is in the youngest quartile; indeed, just 2 other starters are as much as a full year younger than the 26-year-old Edmonton native. Worth noting that among that identified group of 32 starters, Skinner already ranks sixth in games won (19) in the playoffs, more than the likes of Connor Hellebuyck, Darcy Kuemper or Cam Talbot. Or, for that matter, John Gibson. He’s accomplished a fair amount at a young age.
On the financial side, his $2.6 million cap hit ranks 35th among NHL goalies. Between their two netminders, Edmonton ranks in the bottom 5 league wide for combined cap hit at the position. It’s an important consideration for a club with several high-end players, and no fewer than a dozen skaters with a larger cap hit than their #1 stopper.
None of which is to say that the Oilers shouldn’t explore what options might be available on the trade market. But Stan Bowman himself downplayed that notion in a recent interview with Daniel Nugent-Bowman of The Athletic, drawing comparisons to his own past experience with two-time Stanley Cup winner Corey Crawford. “I just look at: How is (Skinner) performing? From November on, he’s been very consistent. He’s been a very good goalie. Goalies always have a goal here and there you don’t like. The reality of the situation doesn’t line up with the narrative sometimes. And Pickard’s played great. Neither one of them had the best start. That’s a fair statement. The reality is they’ve had a strong run here for a pretty large sample of games. It’s not like it’s a three-week stretch where they’ve had a good run. It’s been a while. You have to acknowledge that.”
Pressed as to whether he would explore the goaltending market at all, Bowman reiterated: “Well, we’re going to look at every option for improving. But I would say no. That’s not a big issue with our team. I’ve got to do my job and run out every potential opportunity. But that’s not the front-burner issue for us.”
Not the answer a lot of Oilers fans want to hear at this point. This one remains fine with it.
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