Goaltending is not something you can take for granted. The Edmonton Oilers showed this last night, with Stuart Skinner playing just okay between the pipes, and the outmatched, outplayed, and outworked Los Angeles Kings walked away with an undeserving win in Game 2.
Skinner’s goaltending numbers
Last night, Skinner was not the busier goaltender. Looking solely at 5v5, Skinner faced 22 total shots, made 17 saves, and allowed five goals. Every goal the Kings scored was at 5v5 last night.
In comparison, Cam Talbot faced 20 shots at 5v5, made 17 saves, and allowed just three goals.
The real issue though is the quality of those shots.
Skinner faced a total of 1.88 expected goals against last night and finished with 3.12 goals below expected. In comparison, Talbot was at -1.91, still not great by any means, but significantly better than Skinner.
It’s hard to win when your goaltender isn’t operating at least where you expect him to relative to league average.
Skinner also saw an average goal distance of 25.2 feet last night and sits at 27.56 feet overall this series. That ranks fourth last overall in the NHL, among 17 goalies who have played a game this playoffs.
In the regular season, Skinner had this save profile according to HockeyViz.com.
It’s an interesting distribution, where Skinner is fantastic at saving very low-percentage shots, as he should be, and also around expected at high-danger saves. But, he’s quite bad at medium-danger shots. Overall, he allowed more goals than expected by a significant margin of 7.5.
In the playoffs, it’s just been bad across the board. Here’s how Skinner’s save percentage breaks down by danger level according to NaturalStatTrick.com. This is all at 5v5.
| HDSV% | MDSV% | LDSV% | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Raw | 0.786 | 0.750 | 0.852 |
| League Rank, 18 goalies | 11 | 16 | 17 |
Skinner is third last for medium-danger, second last for high-danger, and eighth last for low-danger save percentages.
This is simply not good enough.
Skinner doesn’t have to be elite, just average
In the regular season, Skinner was a pretty average goaltender, which was good enough for the Oilers.
It will be crucial to limit traffic in front of Skinner, allow him to see shots from all areas of the ice, and give him a better chance at saving those shots.
Last night he was considerably below-average—which is just not going to cut it. The Kings are probably the easiest matchup for the Oilers in the playoffs. Edmonton knows how to beat the Kings—they’ve done it twice before—and it really shouldn’t be that difficult to win a series against them in five or six games.
However, a big part of that lies in the pads of Skinner—if he’s not at least average, the Oilers are in trouble. Maybe not against the Kings, but definitely against whoever comes next.
Photo by Derek Cain/Icon Sportswire
I totally disagree to blame only Skinner. Majority of the goals scored in Game 2 were results of defensive breakdowns. Could he have stopped 1 or 2 of them maybe, but the team in front of him has to play better.
Lets take a look at the goals; 1) Bouchard turns it over in his own end, Ceci is for some reason skating up, which leaves the LA player alone in the slot; 2) Bouchard doesn’t tie up his guy going to the net, he tips the puck and the LA player bats the puck out of the air. Crazy bounce but Bouchard’s mistake again; 3) Kulak pinches, puck gets by him, Vinny over commits to the LA player with the puck and Nuge is caught watching, allowing Doughty to have a breakaway, but then Nuge gets a bit of the stick and throws Skinner off to make the save; 4) Shot on net but Skinner had an LA player screening him and then Ekholm screens him right as the shot is taken. Skinner would just need luck for the puck to hit him cause he couldn’t see a thing. 5) Ceci steps up at the red line but the puck is redirected past him and goes to the center of the Oilers blue line right to the LA player but Nurse is playing to far on his side, not picking up the LA player who then snipes a great shot past Skinner.
So to look at all those goals I have no idea how anyone would put the blame all on Skinner. He had no chance on majority of those goals.
Team Defense needs to be A LOT more solid to help your Goalie to win !!!
Yeah. Skinner needs to stop giving away the puck at his own blue line and quit giving up break aways. Needs to skate harder to get back and break it up. That whole”batted the puck in from mid air” goal must be stopped! No excuse for that.