Player Discussion Stuart Skinner

yukoner88

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Dec 16, 2009
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Wanted to throw this out there.

While Skinner was very average for many playoff starts this spring, now is not the time to panic and give up on him or throw him away.

He's a Calder finalist, and was good enough to win the starters crease and saved our regular season from being a total disaster with Campbell.

Further more, we've seen Skinner's game, and mental game grow stronger season by s season and there's no reason to believe that this trend will not continue. The team may need a better insurance policy behind Skinner, but Skinner himself will keep improving and in the long run the Oilers will be a better team for keeping him as a 1 or 1a rather than tossing him aside as a knee jerk reaction. Especially with the team friendly contact he's on.

That's my two cents

I'm feeling vindicated.

A there were a handful of posters (you know who you are) grilled the f*** out of me throughout last summer for voicing my faith in Skinner.

Those of you who shit on Skinner as soon as something went wrong, come give the guy some love for when he has games like the one he just had.

He flat out stole us the game tonight
 

TheNumber4

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alanschu

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Curious if a depth goalie benefits somewhat from essentially having limited pressure beyond "do your best" when called into playoffs compared to a young full time starter like Skinner.
 

Perfect_Drug

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Mar 24, 2006
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Curious if a depth goalie benefits somewhat from essentially having limited pressure beyond "do your best" when called into playoffs compared to a young full time starter like Skinner.
Skinner is playing worse now than almost any point in the regular season.
Something's wrong between his ears.

He's never squaring up against the shooter. He's always in terrible position to cut down the angle. He's down before he needs to be. He's invented this new "move" where he sits on his ass, taking away as little of the net as possible while completely removing his own mobility.

Skinner is being outplayed by a 3rd string goalie and is statistically one of the worst playoff goalies in history. We are now in the territory of deciding if we should start the "statistically worst goalie" of the past 30 years in hopes to spare his feelings.

This is about as lopsided as it gets:
1715622326476.png
 

Despote

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Mar 21, 2023
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Skinner blows. I blame Holland more though. Skinner ain't starter quality, never has been and never was supposed to be.
 

alanschu

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Skinner is playing worse now than almost any point in the regular season.
Something's wrong between his ears.
Oh I won't dispute that. He is struggling and suspect the pressure is getting to him.

I was also just thinking about how, if we lose this series, the Oilers will have lost three straight series to backup (twice to third stringer) goalies.
 

Frank Drebin

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I think sometimes organizations get so blinded by their perception of a player they cant see the reality. They really see this guy as a starting goalie that can win a cup.

I see a guy that is really out of place in the NHL. Its not between the ears. Hes just not good enough to stop enough NHL quality scoring chances.
 
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ThreeOfAPerfectPair

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Oct 26, 2017
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"Skinner not only has the worst numbers of any netminder to start a game in Oilers postseason history. But he is also the NHL’s worst playoff performer in the salary cap era by a sizable margin. Of all 69 goalies since 2005 with at least 15 playoff appearances, Skinner ranks dead last in save percentage with an .881 mark in 20 games. He’s worse than Kari Lehtonen’s .887 (19 games) and Nikolai Khabibulin’s .898 (15 games) – and that’s not a small sample size."

 

foshizzle

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Feb 1, 2007
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"Skinner not only has the worst numbers of any netminder to start a game in Oilers postseason history. But he is also the NHL’s worst playoff performer in the salary cap era by a sizable margin. Of all 69 goalies since 2005 with at least 15 playoff appearances, Skinner ranks dead last in save percentage with an .881 mark in 20 games. He’s worse than Kari Lehtonen’s .887 (19 games) and Nikolai Khabibulin’s .898 (15 games) – and that’s not a small sample size."

Servalli on Stauffer today was excellent.
 

Oilhawks

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"Skinner not only has the worst numbers of any netminder to start a game in Oilers postseason history. But he is also the NHL’s worst playoff performer in the salary cap era by a sizable margin. Of all 69 goalies since 2005 with at least 15 playoff appearances, Skinner ranks dead last in save percentage with an .881 mark in 20 games. He’s worse than Kari Lehtonen’s .887 (19 games) and Nikolai Khabibulin’s .898 (15 games) – and that’s not a small sample size."


But the dipshit media here are calling for him to start after one of his absolute worst playoff games

Makes sense.
 
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Aerchon

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Jul 20, 2011
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I'm a big Skinner fan.

I believe the Knob and the Oilers organization is bat shit crazy bad at managing goalies. Have been for an unreal amount of time. Probably since Swartz. Maybe even before.

I don't believe Skinner cost them game 3. Insanely bad coverage. McDavid let Van's best shooter get a grade AAAAAAA opportunity that he probably had less than 5% of missing.

But he did lose them game 1. He has been far more bad than good in round two. He got rightly pulled and we have a solid backup.

If you play Skinner and lose switching to Pichard it is too late. Too much pressure and just a stupid tactic.

Skinner has played bad enough you HAVE to switch to Pichard for game 4. Then if he fails, you go back to Skinner because you then have nothing to lose.

You can't just blindly trust Skinner will turn it around without any supporting evidence. If I remember correctly this is very similar to round 2 last year. Oilers should not repeat history if they can help it. Get Pichard in for game 4, give the Oilers a better chance to win.
 

The Panther

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Gotta go with Pickard and hope he doesn't crap the bed.

Stu was bad in game one, so-so in game two, and so-so / poor-ish in game three. He wasn't even that bad in the past game (two goals against are just massive defensive breakdowns by veteran NHL forwards that should never have been chances in the first place), but it's getting to the point where just being 'so-so' isn't going to cut it anymore. At some point (the second round, for example), you need a goalie who can steal one if you're going to advance. For all that I like the guy, Skinner hasn't yet shown that ability. There are just too many goals against per the low number of grade-A chances the Canucks are generating.

Our club is forced to roll the dice and hope the career AHL guy -- who wasn't even supposed to play this season -- can save the season, while the $5 million-a-year guy rests at the end of his AHL season.

Well managed, Oilers... well managed.
 

Fishy McScales

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I think sometimes organizations get so blinded by their perception of a player they cant see the reality. They really see this guy as a starting goalie that can win a cup.

I see a guy that is really out of place in the NHL. Its not between the ears. Hes just not good enough to stop enough NHL quality scoring chances.
I agree. There's lots of talk about the pressure and his mental game etc.

I just see a goalie that is good for a backup role in this league, at least at this stage of his career. He has no business starting in the playoffs for a supposed contender. None. He isn't good enough of a goalie for that. No mental explanations required.

He's had decent-to-good regular-season stretches, but I think a lot of that comes from the Oilers being a better defensive team than they're given credit for. In the playoffs you only get to play the really good teams, though, plus they all elevate their game.

It doesn't feel like Skinner possesses that ability to elevate, it's all just even keel. That works if you're a super solid goalie, but he isn't unfortunately. Very rarely does he make memorable saves, almost never does he flat out steal a game.

I've lost a lot of faith because we now essentially need to hope Calvin Pickard can pull an Adin Hill if we're going to win the cup. Hope I'm wrong.
 
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