The Edmonton Oilers have been slowly turning the season around of late after a slow start, and while the turnaround has been led broadly by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, there has been great support coming from a good chunk of the lineup. The one area that this team has struggled has been in net. Despite Stuart Skinner starting to find his legs, the team has not been getting the quality of saves that they have been used to. Given how much they have ridden him as opposed to playing Calvin Pickard has shown the comfort they have in him.
Long and the short of it, the team has needed a backup goaltender. Mackenzie Blackwood has been a name connected to the team for months now, but alas this week he was traded to the San Jose Sharks along with Givani Smith and a 2027 fifth-round pick in exchange for Alexandar Georgiev, Nikolai Kovalenko, and a 2026 second-round pick.
Was there a fit between the Oilers and Blackwood?
Put into Oilers terms, the trade was roughly Pickard, a fringe NHLer and a fifth rounder, and arguably Pickard is more valuable arguably as he is easier to waive to the AHL should they wished. The Sharks have Vitek Vanecek in net and have Yaroslav Askarov in the AHL waiting for a larger role.
For the Oilers, adding a veteran netminder like Blackwood would have been of immense value. The former New Jersey Devils draft pick has been consistently capable of playing as either a backup or starter and has been a relatively decent netminder over his career. His numbers are relatively tarnished by playing on not great teams, but to have a 0.911 save percentage with the basement-dwelling San Jose Sharks is pretty incredible.
From a cap perspective, his pro-rated $2.35M hit would have taken some maneuvering to fit under the cap but if you subtract Pickard and moved Kane to LTIR or moved another depth NHLer like Derek Ryan or Connor Brown in the deal, the numbers would have worked perfectly.
The numbers, the cap hit, and simply how little it cost Colorado to acquire his services are one thing, but how much more flexibility it would have given the team is perhaps why this one hurts most of all. Everybody around the Oilers knows that Skinner goes through ups and downs. Some weeks he looks simply unbeatable and other days it feels like Mike Smith reincarnated. Having a goalies who is publicly struggling as hard as Skinner has is obviously hard on the team and hard on Skinner himself.
How big of a miss was this?
The team could have had a winner in Blackwood here, and it’s honestly a little bit of a headscratcher that they didn’t elect to try and up the ante with San Jose on this one. And while all of our mamas have taught us not to cry over spilled milk, it’s hard not to lament what could have been. Even if Skinner is playing better now than before, it’s really hard to not worry that he may fall into one of those spells again in a week that really matters and that could cost the team in the playoffs.
Not having a reliable backup is a curse a number of teams have faced, but it always seems to come back and bit them when they least expect it. The Vancouver Canucks got well-above expected goaltending from Arturs Sivlos in the playoffs last year, but losing Thatcher Demko was the straw that broke their playoff run. There is a reason more teams are electing for a tandem in net, so as to split the risk of their main goalie falling out of form at a critical time.
While the Oilers are doing better, the team should still very much be in the market for an upgrade in net. There should be a number of teams looking to move a goalie, including the Calgary Flames with Dan Vladar, the Anaheim Ducks with John Gibson, and the Pittsburgh Penguins with Tristan Jarry, and the Oilers should be critically examining the cost and upside of making a deal on one of them.
There’s still time to delete this. Packard is a very serviceable back up.