There’s no hiding it—Stuart Skinner was extremely poor on Thursday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning, ultimately costing the Edmonton Oilers the game and their eight-game win streak. The 7–4 loss was a clear reminder of the current state of the Oilers’ crease, with Skinner making 19 saves on 24 shots while one of the league’s top goalies in Andrei Vasilvesky made 53 saves on 57 shots.
Skinner himself took ownership of his play after the game, saying he cost his team the two points after a strong effort from the skaters.
Skinner was also correct in establishing that through 40 minutes, his game had not been bad but that it fell apart in the third.
We’ll break down the goals here:
Stamkos opens up the scoring
A broken play on a pass to the slot gets recovered by Nicholas Paul, who feeds Steven Stamkos for a one-timer just off the hashmarks. Skinner was down during the scrum trying to find the puck, so as he gets back to his feet and is moving over, he’s a hair behind the play and beat by one of the NHL’s premier releases.
Motte gets the second of the game
It’s not super visible on the video, but Skinner was interfered with before the original shot. Luke Glendening cuts through the crease, pulling Skinner’s right skate towards the far boards. Whether the refs blamed this on the defenceman or called it incidental contact, it ultimately makes a huge difference on the play as Skinner is not square for the initial shot and is rotating into it. That leads to a rebound coming off his pads that ends up right on Tyler Motte’s stick, who is able to put it home before the three Oilers surrounding him or Skinner can get over.
Stamkos ties up the game
Tampa Bay makes a low to high pass to Haydn Fleury that gets by Darnell Nurse, which is followed by the $9.25M dman trying to block the shot from half way in Skinner’s sightline. Despite that, Skinner is able to make a good first save, directing the puck towards the corner and not on the ice, where one would typically assume rebounds would be vulnerable for second chances. However, Stamkos makes an extremely high skill play to bat the puck into the short side from mid-air.
Tampa Bay is in the lead
Nikita Kucherov enters the zone on a two-on-two, attacking directly at Cody Ceci. The Tampa forward puts the puck into Ceci’s feet and tries to go around him. At this point, Skinner decides he’s going to attack the puck, but only does so with a half poke (blocker stays at the paddle instead of extending to the knob). WHen this happens, Kucherov is able to get around Ceci and tuck it five hole. Skinner needs to be more assertive and make sure he gets the puck, or stay back and ensure the five hole is sealed (this should happen regardless if he poke checks or not).
A hat trick for Stamkos
Stamkos enters the zone on a two-on-two and holds up just inside the blueline, waiting for traffic to move in between him and Skinner. As this happens, he releases a glove side shot that is hidden behind Evan Bouchard’s feet. Regardless, Skinner is deep in his net with no immediate pass options and even then, should be able to track and catch up to a shot from that distance.
How does it all shake out?
Ultimately, I think Skinner was fine up to and including the third goal. The shot clock might not have been in his favour, but the specific situations he was facing were extremely difficult and resulted in reasonable goals against. Goals 4 and 5 however, were horrendous, and cost the team the game.
On both those goals, there weren’t specific technical deficiencies that the Lightning exploited as much as it was sloppy execution and poor reads. Simply put, it was a lot to do with fatigue.
I don’t think anyone has been under the impression that Skinner was going to be an elite NHL starter. But the Oilers are deploying him that way. Despite some clear struggles, Skinner has started 21 of 27 games so far for the Oilers, with Jack Campbell exiled to Bakersfield and the team clearly not trusting Calvin Pickard.
There’s the physical and mental fatigue of playing almost every game, the limited time to recover on the travel heavy West Conference schedule, and the unideal rest situation likely caused by having newborn Beau Skinner at home. But being the every day guy means limited goalie reps in practice. When an elite guy is off early every morning skate, there’s more substance in their game to fall back on.
With Skinner still trying to fully establish himself in the league, the situation the Oilers have created would not allow him to work on some of the technical bugs that might be plaguing him, on top of sloppy execution from his body wearing out.
The Oilers have a relatively light schedule until February, so the common narrative is going to be that goalie fatigue won’t be a factor for the next couple months. But the fact is that for a goalie of his caliber and cap hit, Skinner has already played too much, and it’s starting to show on the ice. Whether you think the Edmonton native can be the starter come playoff time or not (and I think the workload doesn’t allow for a clear picture of that), it’s malpractice for Ken Holland not to go get a second goalie the team trusts. The Oilers might have one goalie they want to use now, but at this rate, they’ll be down to zero.
Photo by Curtis Comeau/Icon Sportswire
