Projecting what Stuart Skinner’s extension will look like with the Oilers

There may not be a more important season in Stuart Skinner’s career than the upcoming 2025-26 campaign.

Because when it’s all said and done, a massive decision will have to be made about the Edmonton Oilers’ pending unrestricted free agent.

This season will be Skinner’s final of a three-year extension signed in Dec. 2002 that pays him $2.6-million per year. However, the first two years of his deal, Skinner has struggled to fully establish himself as a No. 1 goaltender, instead somewhat finding himself the product of some really good Oilers teams.

Of the 31 goaltenders who have played 82 or more games in the last two seasons, Skinner ranks 10th in games played and sixth in wins. Wins, however, aren’t solely a goaltender’s statistic, nor are things like save percentage or goals against average, which his .901 and 2.71 rank 22nd and 14th, respectively.

Two metrics we can look at to better examine a goaltender, thanks to Hockey Reference’s Stathead, are goals saved above average (GSAA) and goalie point shares (GPS). GSAA looks at “the goals this goalie prevented given his save percentage and shots faced vs. the league average save percentage on the same number of shots,” while GPS is “an estimate of the number of points contributed by a player due to his play in goal.” His -2.2 GSAA ranks 22nd, while his GPS is a little more middle of the pack at 17th overall.

If we rank all of those numbers and average them out for the group of goaltenders, Skinner ranks 15th out of 31 — a perfectly cromulent average starting netminder.

There’s an argument to be made that Skinner has outperformed the current contract he’s on, as the average cap hit for this group of goalies is $4.448-million — $1.848-million more than what Skinner’s made in each of the last two seasons.

Then, of course, there’s the playoffs, where it’s been another up and down experience, giving more Hyde than Jekyll.

So what would a realistic contract extension look like for Skinner? According to Evolving Hockey, there’s a wide range of outcomes.

The predicted, or most likely deal is a five-year extension carrying a $6.817-million cap hit — something Evolving Hockey projects to have a 22 percent chance of happening. But there’s four other deals which have a greater than 12 percent chance at happening.

That’s an undeniably large range of outcomes for Skinner, and whatever his next contract looks like — in Edmonton or elsewhere — will largely be dependant on what he’s able to accomplish this year. If he establishes himself as a true No. 1 starting goaltender, a longer term deal to keep him in Edmonton makes sense.

If not, a shorter-term deal with the Oilers bringing in another goaltender, or someone to replace him, is entirely possible.

Projecting other extensions

• Jake Walman
• Connor McDavid