Stuart Skinner's future with Oilers a key consideration for GM Bowman
So, will Stu Skinner be back in net next season as the No. 1?
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Or will he be sharing the crease in a 1 and 1a scenario, but not with the good soldier Calvin Pickard as a partner? Maybe they trade for somebody who is or was a starter.
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Enquiring minds want to know, and they're all wearing Edmonton Oilers jerseys.
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There's this feeling that fixing the goaltending here is as simple as looking up plumbers on Google and having somebody come by to fix the leaking toilet.
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It's not.
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For sure, Skinner was outplayed by Sergei Bobrovsky in the final against Florida, but Bob's arguably on a career path to the Hall of Fame with his two Cup rings and his two Vezina trophies, plus his 445 regular-season wins, top 10 all-time.
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Skinner has only played three NHL seasons (189 regular-season games, 50 in the playoffs), not Bob's 15 years (777 regular-season games and 117 in the playoffs). But he did get the Oilers to the last two Cup finals, with ample help from Pickard along the way this spring. He was definitely better than the ballyhooed Jake Oettinger in the Western Conference final against Dallas, not just this year, but last spring.
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So, how bad can Skinner be? He wasn't the reason the Oilers lost to Florida this June; they're just too deep, reminding people of the early 80s New York Islanders with their talent and their wear-you-down philosophy of play.
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Again, Skinner is a good goalie who is in the mix for one of the three Olympic spots next February. But, there still could be a different configuration in net, like maybe somebody to push Skinner for playing time.
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'I don't want to single the goaltending out,' said Bowman, who balked at trading for goaltending help at the deadline, maybe because he won three Cups in Chicago with Corey Crawford and Antti Niemi in net, so good goalies but not great ones.
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But, he knows the narrative in this city, where Skinner, an accountable, nice guy with lots of ability, gave up two goals in the first period of all five starts in the final series after outplaying Oettinger and Hill, specifically, in heavyweight matchups earlier.
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'It's something we'll investigate this summer — what's the best path moving forward for our team. It's hard to predict where that's going to go. We have to have lots of conversations about what other teams are looking to do,' said Bowman, who did concede that the forward group and the goalies would be evaluated most deeply.
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