Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli believes Edmonton Oilers fans perceive Stuart Skinner higher when compared to the rest of the league.
During a recent appearance on OilersNation Everyday with Tyler Yaremchuk and Liam Horrobin, Seravalli was asked about Skinner’s slow start to the season and how other NHL teams view him when compared to Oilers fans. He noted that the netminder’s inconsistencies are a major factor in why he is not revered as much outside of Edmonton.
“I do think that among Oiler fans, the perception of Stuart Skinner is higher than it would be around the rest of the NHL,” he said. “When I look at Skinner’s game, the biggest thing is just the waves. It’s way too high and too low. He’s either on fire or he is among the worst goalies in the league. And it seems like there’s just no middle ground.”
Seravalli mentioned an article from Daily Faceoff’s Matt Larkin, who pointed out that the Oilers’ month-by-month record was correlated with the save percentage. He noted that while the Oilers’ xGF% at 5v5 remained in the top 10 each month of last season, the play of Skinner and Calvin Pickard directly led to how well the team did each night.
Of course, every goalie is bound to have a stinker or a losing streak every now and then because no netminder is perfect. The issue with Skinner seems to be that he can either be the goalie who carries the Oilers to the Stanley Cup Final or be benched in the middle of a playoff series cause he can’t stop a thing. Seravalli thinks that Skinner needs to raise his threshold of an off night to a high enough level yet which can be achieved through experience.
“When you have an offence that starts through the first four or five games and is as explosive as it is but doesn’t score, it’s okay to ask your goalie to make a save and he doesn’t,” he said. “It’s like when one side of the team is broken, he’s not picking it up. There’s never this balance that exists. It’s either all bad or no bad, and that’s also another kind of problematic part of his game. That might be a fluke, it might be a coincidence but that’s part of the reason I think why he gets more blame from the fan base. When you don’t score and you’re not getting the run support, it’s okay to go out and pitch a gem.”
As mentioned earlier, Skinner has it in him to propel his game into the upper echelon of the league and that netminder is why Edmonton was able to go on the magical run that they did last spring. The issue is that there is no easy answer to figure out how to get Skinner quickly to that higher threshold when he isn’t quite on his game, especially given the team has aspirations of getting back to the Final and getting over the hump this time around.
The noise surrounding Skinner will not go away until he finds his way out of his slow start. Otherwise, the Oilers risk being put behind the eight-ball early for the second year in a row.
You can watch the entire segment with Seravalli down below.
