More lessons to be learned for Oilers' Stuart Skinner after another Cup loss
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What does Stuart Skinner learn from two straight painful Stanley Cup Final losses, even getting his team to Game 7 and Game 6?
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That the wheel can turn, because there was a time when the Florida Panthers thought Sergei Bobrovsky's contract was a giant albatross, paying him $10 million a year. The fans wanted to run him out of town, and now? He's their loveable Bob, their two-time Stanley Cup winner who married his mental toughness with consistency.
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Skinner was outplayed by Bobrovsky in this Edmonton Oilers loss.
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Skinner knows it, the fans in Edmonton know it. Maybe management does too, and maybe GM Stan Bowman investigates the goalie market this summer after balking at any addition in net at the trade deadline.
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For sure, Bobrovsky wasn't always this good.
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Yeah, he would like the same trajectory as Bobrovsky.
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'I've been in the league for three years and he's had 14 years and you can tell,' said Skinner, who is 10 years younger. 'You can tell nothing changes with him. You can tell mentally he's in the same spot whether he lets in six or gets a shutout.
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'I couldn't tell the difference (staying the zone) until there were two minutes left in this game and he knew he had won the Stanley Cup.
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'I would love to get in touch with him and try to fill his shoes.'
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Skinner tried to approach every game the same way as Bobrovsky but he couldn't get through the first periods in his starts without getting scored on.
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It was draining for the team and for him.
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'Absolutely. After every first period I let in two goals. That's hard to take especially when you have to play them six times or in my case five (starts),' he said.
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'They're always ahead and it's a battle. You're always opening up (as a team) and they're getting chances because you have to go for it.'
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Skinner gave up two goals in the first 20 minutes of Game 6, one when Sam Reinhart who busted past Mattias Ekholm after a giveaway by his partner Evan Bouchard and one in the last minute of the opening frame on a Matthew Tkachuk shot from the high slot when nobody picked up the trailing winger.
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Maybe they could have used a big save on Reinhart because the Oilers were once again chasing the game, but the killer was Reinhart's deep into the second period, started by Skinner. He couldn't handle a harmless-looking 50-foot flip shot by Carter Verhaeghe, batted it away and right on to the stick of Aleksander Barkov. In five seconds it was off Reinhart's skate and in to make it 3-zip. Game over.
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