The Edmonton Oilers signed Jack Campbell to be their starting goalie last summer. Some might tell you that Campbell was a slam dunk signing, but that would be revisionist history of what Campbell was coming into his tenure with Edmonton. Analysis at the time outlined that Campbell did not have a sustained past of playing a starter workload, staying healthy, or having success stopping the puck. Even then, his unorthodox style did not make him a good fit behind the Oilers defensive structure.
Campbell’s 2022–23 campaign
Even the biggest skeptic wasn’t predicting the unmitigated distaster that was the first season of Campbell’s five-year contract. Right from game one, the new Oiler struggled, giving up goals early and often in games, relying on the Oilers’ potent offence to bail him out on a game by game basis. The struggles weren’t completely random either. Mike McKenna from Daily Faceoff and myself wrote in depth pieces outlining the technical issues Campbell had at the time that carried on throughout the season. Campbell’s difficulties with rebounds, cross-ice plays, and patience stemmed from underlying problems with his stance and tracking habits.
Some of these habits improved as the season wore on. Campbell’s stance became notably narrower later in the season, which helped him stay patient and beat passes. Accordingly, Campbell’s results started to bounce back, albeit against the 32nd ranked Anaheim Ducks.
However, Campbell’s best performance all year came when he was needed the most during his relief appearance in Game 4 against Los Angeles. Despite that, it was too little too late as Campbell’s performance over the season lost his coach’s trust to the point he stuck with a struggling Stuart Skinner in the playoffs. Campbell was likely responsible for lost points that lost the Oilers home ice in the second round. The club lost a chance to win the Western Conference and his bloated salary as a back up restricted Ken Holland’s ability to improve the roster elsewhere.
The Oilers’ two buyout windows have elapsed, and it seems unlikely that Campbell would be traded at this point, so he will return to Edmonton’s crease in 2023–24.
Here are three key things to look for if Campbell will improve in his sophomore season in Orange and Blue.
1. Mental toughness
Campbell has never been accused of being an unflappable netminder. After being a top prospect and first-round pick as a goalie, Campbell struggled upon turning pro. The Dallas Stars organization tried to change his game which didn’t help, but Campbell’s struggles were evident even at the AHL and ECHL levels. It wasn’t until he gained traction in the Los Angeles Kings organization that Campbell became an established pro.
The last 18 months of Campbell’s career might have been the worst of Campbell’s mental struggles. Campbell took time away from the Maple Leafs down the stretch during the 2021–22 season before returning in time for the playoffs, where he struggled in the first-round exit against Tampa Bay. It’s important to acknowledge that mental health should come ahead of anything hockey related, but availability, especially at the goaltender position, is an asset that should be valued in players.
During his first season with the Oilers, Campbell continued to struggle with his mental game. He repeatedly beat up on himself during post game press conferences, helping accelerate the narrative of his struggles. Adding this to poor body language on the ice, and it wasn’t a great confidence booster for the team playing in front of him.
Another underlying symptom of Campbell’s struggles was his constant equipment changes. Campbell had moved from modern specs to an older style soft pad during his resurgence with the Kings and had apparently associated this gear with his success as a goalie. This caused some performance issues early in the year, with the soft pads giving out rebounds close to the net that were easily tapped in. He also had issues with his glove throughout the season, with pucks literally going through the pocket and having issues with a collapsing T at the top of the webbing.
The result was five different gloves, and three different sets of pads and blockers. Campbell started the year in Vaughn equipment that was structured around designs over 10 years old. After an initial mishap with his glove, he moved from a single T to double T Vaughn glove with a skate lace pocket instead of the cord in the first glove (the T refers to the reinforced spine in the pocket of the glove.) Then debuting in his New Year’s Eve start, Campbell made a drastic change, moving to a complete set of Brian’s gear, with a much more modern design with a stiff pad to kick out rebounds.
Campbell continued to have issues with his glove, despite already changing twice. He switched his Brian’s glove again to a stiffer reinforcement around the perimeter of the glove.
The last change came when he moved from Brian’s to Bauer equipment. On April 1, Campbell debuted a Bauer Hypersonic glove. Then as the playoffs started, he started wearing the matching Hypersonic pads and blocker, first using them in game action during his relief appearance in the L.A. series.
Progress next year would see Campbell not only present a more confident front on and off the ice, but see him take ownership for his play and stop indirectly blaming his equipment. There may have been some technical deficiencies in the gear before, but after his changes to the most progressive models on the market, there are no excuses left.
2. Tracking
Both McKenna’s and my analysis highlighted tracking as a major issue when it came to Campbell’s play. The most obvious of the issues came when he was reacting to releases from his distance. Due to the way angles are played, movements on saves should be moving forward and towards the shot release, which helps eliminate potential holes.
Campbell’s bad habit is that he would pull off of releases. This means his gloves and/or pads would be actively retreating towards the net, then extending sideways to try to catch up to the shot. This would result in 1) him being late reacting to shots due to the extra movement he had to make, and 2) being inaccurate trying to locate the shots due to the save being made in his peripheral vision.
Some of this had been caused by Campbell’s wide stance that he entered last season with. Having his feet set wide would force him down into a butterfly, which would result in his upper body pulling straight upward and away from the puck. As the season wore on, this started to get rectified but some of the other underlying issues did not.
Campbell is more of a read-and-react goalie compared to tracking through his technique. This means he’s often working off of pattern recognition on how he approaches plays and shot releases. However, this leaves him susceptible to redirections, deceptive releases and rebound opportunities. When Campbell is only reacting to the shot release, any deviation of the trajectory caused by a stick, shin pad, skate, or anything else on the ice can completely ruin the read and any chance at making the save.
Even then, shooters have started to study goaltenders more in recent years, and will be able to pick on tendencies by hiding their intentions with their shooting mechanics. But perhaps the area where this gets to Campbell the most is that if there’s a rebound after a save, Campbell has to completely re-find the puck after it comes off his body as there’s a lack of tracking to contact. This can cause him to be late on second and third chance opportunities.
Improvement in this area for Campbell would come in the form of proper tracking to contact, which would see him close on pucks on the release while following them out from the save so that he could reset for rebound chances. This would lead to him being more in control while getting beat clean less from distance.
3. Skating
Campbell is generally regarded as an “athletic” goalie. Now this is a misused term amongst the public describing goalies. There is a very high athletic bar to play the position in general, and actually playing it with proper technique might be even more physically demanding. The goalies the public labels as “athletic” are usually more active in their crease, making big movements to compensate for getting caught out of position.
Campbell falls into this category. If you watch him play, he’s almost always moving. This creates a few issues. The biggest is it causes a noticeable delay when reacting to passes. With his feet are in motion, when a pass is made, he needs to reset to a stance where he can then rotate and push to the new shooter. It might not seem like much, but this delay is often the difference between a save and a goal at NHL speeds.
This gets compounded by the lack of rotation that Campbell has been guilty of having on his movements. The “angle” is the direct line from the puck to the centre of the net, and a goalie will almost always want to take the direct line from his current position to the new angle after a pass. Campbell has a tendency to panic on lateral passes when he’s caught out of position. Instead of trying to recover to the angle, he pushes flat (perpendicular to the existing angle) and ends up reaching back towards the puck. This can result in some “highlight” saves where it looks like he had no chance, but more frequently it ends up with a goal into a relatively open cage.
The last part of his skating that affected his results was his feet never setting on shots. This would lead to his feet falling behind him as he tried to make the save and not ending up square to the shot. This ends up with him falling back onto his heels, which gives the appearance of looking small in the net and results in a narrow butterfly that doesn’t cover the entirety of the bottom of the net.
If Campbell can work on these areas, he will be able to work ahead of the play, appearing to be in control and making more “easy saves” that don’t show up in the nightly top 10 but are more sustainably able to be made because of the control that comes with them.
Looking ahead
Campbell has a lot of work to do this summer. There were some obvious red flags heading into his signing that became amplified as he entered his first big contract as a starting goalie this past season. Some of the weaknesses were improved on as the season went on, but the improved sample was against weak competition and was in a small sample so it’s tough to know if it’ll last.
It’s tough to predict if Campbell will actually improve this season. Mental toughness, tracking, and skating are such fundamental parts of how a goalie plays that it might be tough to convince the 31 year old to abandon the way he did things to get him to the point he is.
A hopeful sign for Oiler fans might be that the tracking component is what Goalie Coach Dustin Schwartz helped rectify in Mike Smith’s play and Campbell showed signs of life late in the campaign. On the other hand, it reportedly took year’s for coaches and advisor’s to convince Campbell to switch from old style gear that was a detriment to his results to the modern equipment using today’s standards and materials.
One thing’s for sure, if Campbell can’t step up his play this year and with the Oilers seemingly in a perpetual cap squeeze, Holland or his successor could be looking at a costly buyout or cap dump come next summer.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
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