The Edmonton Oilers have re-called goaltender Calvin Pickard; Jack Campbell clears waivers

To the surprise of no one, Jack Campbell with his poor play and expensive contract has cleared waivers. The team put Campbell on waivers yesterday in a roster shakeup. With a goalie going down, one must come up, and that was the Oilers’ next roster transaction.

Oilers re-call Pickard

Calvin Pickard has been re-called by Edmonton to serve as the team’s backup. In the time between Campbell clearing and Pickard coming up, the Oilers practised with UBC’s goaltender Dorrin Luding.

Pickard comes to the Oilers having signed a two-year, $762.5K annual average value contract with the team in the 2022 offseason. Last season with the tandem of Campbell and Skinner, Pickard was held off the Oilers roster entirely as the Calder-worthy performance of Skinner gave the team stability in net.

This season, the stability is simply not there.

For context on Pickard, he had a strong year in the AHL last season with the Bakersfield Condors. He featured in 38 games and posted a 2.70 GAA with a .912 SV%, good for an overall record of 23–12–2. So far this season, He’s featured in four games with an even better 2.03 GAA and .939 SV%; however, his record is a bit worse off at 2–2–0.

Edmonton making a statement

This overall goalie swap for Edmonton doesn’t come lightly. Waiving a $5.0M goalie is no small move, but it had to be done. With Pickard coming onto the Oilers’ roster, he serves as a bona fide backup. Skinner should be getting the bulk of the starts as the team looks for him to regain the stellar form he has last season.

That said, with how poorly Skinner’s season has gone so far, the Oilers may end up forced to rely on Pickard for some games too. At the very least, they should get him into frequent game action just to see what they have with him in case Skinner can’t find the form the team desperately needs.

The clock is running out in Edmonton and they’re backed into a corner. It’ll be tough to work their way out of the hole but at least if they start fixing themselves from the crease they’ll have some kind of foundation to work on.