All Jeff Skinner wants for Christmas is some playing time.
The skilled winger inked a one-year, $3 million contract with the Oilers in the summer after having the final three seasons of his eight-year, $72 million deal with the Buffalo Sabres bought out.
Skinner started the 2024-25 campaign playing in Edmonton’s top-six forward group. He scored two goals and five points over 11 games in the month of October and logged an average of 14:47 per night.
His playing time and production both decreased during the month of November, as Skinner scored two goals and three points over 13 games while playing 12:39 on average. So far in December, he has two goals and four points in 10 games and has been averaging 11:51 per night.
All told, the 32-year-old has six goals and 12 points through 34 games this season, which is below what the Oilers were hoping for when they added the former 40-goal scorer in July.
Skinner has been playing mostly on the Oilers’ fourth line over the past few weeks, which isn’t the ideal spot for an offence-first player. When asked about what the veteran needs to do in order to move into a more prominent role among Edmonton’s forward group, head coach Kris Knoblauch said that his opportunity will come eventually.
“Just play good hockey,” Knbolauch said following the team’s 3-1 win over the Ottawa Senators on Sunday. “I look at our team and who is he elevating? We’ve got a lot of guys that are playing really well right now. He’ll have his opportunity. The season’s long. There’s injuries, there’s guys that go through slumps.
Tonight I thought was a good game from him. Derek Ryan, Corey Perry, and Skinner played extremely well tonight. They spent a lot of time in the offensive zone, they’re around the net a lot. That’s what I expect from him.”
The Oilers are 11-3-0 over the past month of play and there hasn’t been any reason to shake up their forward group.
The newly-acquired Vasily Podkolzin and Kasperi Kapanen have found chemistry playing with Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid has his usual veteran duo of Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman on the wings on the top line. When Nugent-Hopkins was unavailable because of an illness on Sunday, the Oilers moved Viktor Arvidsson into his spot with McDavid and Hyman.
In order for Skinner to find his way into more playing time, he’ll first have to show that he can consistently bring solid two-way play in his role on the fourth line. Though he’s tied for fourth on the team in goals, he has the lowest on-ice goal differential of any forward on the Oilers at 12-to-21.
The Oilers will be off this week for the NHL’s Christmas break and they’ll return to action with a back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday in Southern California against the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Mighty Ducks.
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