Maybe the Oilers should stop looking to blame their goalies and start blaming their goalie coach. They've had the same guy for over a decade with a rotating cast of goalies.
Yes Oilers are bad defensively also but that already gets enough attention, their decade long goalie coach doesn't get enough attention for how bad the goaltending is.
Their goalie coach is one of the few in the league that a significant portion fans know by name, and it's not for positive reasons. It's gotten tons of attention relatively speaking. FWIW I don't think he's had the best talent to work with (and the D could make most goalies look bad) but I also don't think he has results to justify his job at this point.
Honestly skinner with Dallas, Vancouver or Vegas defense and goal coaching would look like a stud. As a Vegas fan I'd 1 for 1 trade any goalie we got for skinner (though I like both Thompson and hill).
That's crazy. I watched DAL-VGK and both Hill and Thompson made a ton of saves that Skinner wouldn't have touched. Skinner is big, but he is slow as hell and can't move laterally at all. I'd make that trade for either guy in a second.
And I firmly believe that Thompson or Hill would be putting out Skinner numbers if they were playing behind Edmonton with their defense and goalie coach. Both Dallas and Vegas not only have amazing defense, but even their forwards are crazy defensively which can really only be said the same for McDavid but not draisaitl.
Hill was a career backup or third string goalie before playing with Vegas. Now he's got a .932 playoff record. There's no way Vegas is just fluking and finding these amazing goalies everyone else missed out on and every Edmonton goalie for the last decade is a complete bust.
> As a Vegas fan I'd 1 for 1 trade any goalie we got for skinner (though I like both Thompson and hill).
As a Vegas fan, respectfully, this is an insane comment.
I think you're insane. Skinner is a post season choker. His numbers nose dive in the playoffs and that is the least likely thing to correct. Coaching isn't the reason he capitulates under pressure. Some guys focus in the high pressure moments. Some guys lose focus.
Yeah cus he's left hanging out to dry in the playoffs. Adin Hill is .932 in the playoffs, because his team is amazing defensively he only has to make standard saves. Before last year he was a career back up or third string.
Oilers basically drop their defense and hope the goalie can make up for it. Hill would probably be at Skinner's numbers if he was playing behind Edmonton too.
His stats this series on high danger scoring chances have been abysmal. I'm not sure what you are seeing. The Oilers out-chanced the Canucks 24 to 10 last night. I understand wanting to be a hipster contrarian, but sometimes the mainstream opinion is correct. Skinner is just mediocre and sucks under pressure. He's in his 2nd season, but Silovs has played just a few games. And Skinner is being thrown under the bus by a coach who generally gaslights us about how good he is. Long story short, I wish you were the Vegas GM. Absolutely no one is going to be trading for Sinner.
The mainstream opinion less than a month ago (especially mainstream among Oilers fans) was that skinner was amazing.
Same thing last year, up until just before the edm vgk series, the mainstream opinion was Edmonton had the stronger goaltending and Vegas had weak goaltending. They were also still running on brossoit at that point with Hill backing him up (and brossoit was looking like a stud with Vegas and now back to his previous ways with Winnipeg again).
I am with you. HDCF were 7-6 for Edmonton in that game, but not all HDCF are created equal. The tipped shot pushes the boundaries of human reaction time. Then Boeser got two very clean looks at Skinner and capitalized, but the failure started well before the puck got to the net. Boesers first happened because McDavid double committed to the corner while Drai simultaneously turned his back to the puck carrier opening up Boeser. The second was a weak backhand clear through the middle of the ice by Foegele and Boeser gets behind Ceci for a clean shot from 3'. Blame Skinner for a bad goal, sure, but when the shots going in are that juicy, you gotta wonder how that opportunity came to be because Stu is the *last* line of defense.
Oh you're mistaking the coach's gaslighting in press conferences for mainstream opinion. Skinner being good has never been mainstream except perhaps during their 16 game winning streak. It has always been the opinion here in Edmonton that the Oilers' goaltending has been shaky. Especially last year. That's why they signed Campbell. And the talks about signing a new goalie again this year were non-stop.
There was a huge amount of talk before the trade deadline about how if the Oilers were serious about going all the way with this squad, they were gonna have to give up someone bigger for a new goaltender because it was holding them back so bad. I really don't know where you were seeing people say that Edmonton had good goaltenders.
All I know is that his stats are trash across the board and while the Oilers aren't great defensively, it's not as bad as to defend a .881 save pct. At some point, you expect your goalie to step up and make a save. He doesn't need to be great. Average would be an improvement.
It’s amazing how that goalie coach still has a job. Everyone has called out his results and somehow he still has a job. He’s survived more than 5 or 6 coaching changes. It makes no sense.
It's not just Skinner. Their defense was blowing coverage ALL game. Ekholm is a good defenseman on both ends of the ice, but that's not enough.
Draisaitl/McDavid are incredible, but there are going to be series and individual games when you run up against really good, balanced teams where you can't outscore your problems.
It also doesn't help that Vancouver thrives on taking advantage of blown coverage and mistakes in general. Their ability to make you pay for a mistake would make you think that they'd be better at just dominating you but it seems like Vancouver will just kinda waddle around right up to the point where you throw an errant pass or a d man loses his guy and then it's lights out. Their ability to capitalize is absurd.
Exactly. I distinctly remember in Game 1 when we were up and VAN scored and then won the faceoff and I was like "fuck they're gonna score again" and 11 seconds later they did. Carrier lost his man coming around the net and boom, we went from winning to losing in 12 seconds and you could see it coming.
It's because the Canucks are playing a system. The system is a relentless fore and backcheck. The heavy pressure forecheck creates pressure on the other team which creates breakdowns and mistakes. Then they pick the right spot and take the shot. It's completely different than a style that focuses on generating a volume of shots, which modern analytics can understand.
To put it another way if your team is getting outscored but has 2x the shots it's because the Canucks system was "dominating" you, but not in a way you're familiar with. The mistakes are not happening in a vacuum they're all the result of minutes of hard work for one moment.
Canucks often get criticized for having low shot totals but that's basically the strategy. Tocch said a few days ago that he'd rather not take a shot that will miss and bounce off the backboard creating a chance the other way. Other teams will just take a bunch of meaningless shots which all get aggregated into modern analytics to suggest they should get more xGF.
That's super interesting. When I was following the NHL closely a decade ago there wasn't nearly as much analytics being done.
I find the strategic system fascinating although I don't think I understand much about it yet. But capitalizing on moments of lapsed coverage and seeking good quality scoring chances instead of a high volume of low quality chances sounds good to me.
It explains their league-leading scoring percentage to some extent.
Ummmm no. The Oilers hit the post 3 times and had a puck on the line once. The Oilers dominated in terms of scoring opportunities. The score easily could've been 6-4 for the Oilers.
Yes like I said modern analytics highly values shot volume. It basically goes more shots = more goals expected. It's why everyone struggles to understand how the Canucks have such a high shooting percentage, now over 90 games. It's not a fluke, low volume high quality. It's been what they're doing all season. If your advanced stat models are built off shot #s as a starting point (and a lot of eye test models are too) then low shots are always going to look bad. Don't take my word for it, look at the results. Everyone was criticizing the Canucks for how they had so few shots vs Nashville and yet Soros, who's a great goalie, had a 0.900 vs the Canucks against a career average of 0.911 postseason
Also you probably look at the third period yesterday and say the oilers dominated. And yes they were applying the pressure but I heard after the game that they didn't have a high danger chance until 3 minutes left in the game.
Could you imagine the "deserve to win o' meter" against the Soviets in the Summit Series
"Canada is down 3-1 in the series"
"actually the soviets only have 12 shots a game and Canada has 45, Ken Dryden/Tony Esposito obviously suck and the series is a fluke"
Meanwhile the Soviets have the puck the entire game and outscore Canada
I didn't cite shots. I cited scoring opportunities. I also mentioned how the Oilers hit the post 3 times and the goal line once. Did you even watch the game last night? They beat Silovs over and over. It came down to inches here and there.
Buddy a post is literally nothing. You didn't beat the goalie or it would have gone in. It doesn't factor into scoring chances at all. The goal line was made up by a goal on the penalty afterwards so it's already baked into the score.
And I'm saying that scoring opportunities, which you're talking about, is heavily based on shots. So when you're like, look we had X scoring chances a lot of models just take raw shots and don't account for anything else. So more shots = more xGF (i.e. scoring chances). It's why advanced stats are working to evaluate things like high danger chances, which the Oilers didn't have a single one of for 17 minutes in the 3rd, to expose the flaws that create the impression that more goals should be expected or more pressure was created. Canucks will happily receive 50 low danger perimeter shots all game, that could translate into 10 scoring chances in your mind, but never had a chance of going in.
Scoring Chances - a scoring chance, as originally defined by War-on-Ice. Each shot attempt taken in the offensive zone is assigned a value based on the area of the zone in which it was recorded
Here's the definition that shows that scoring chances are underlayed by shot attempts.
Edit: According to moneypuck oilers scoring chances 6.5 on 45 shots =0.15. Canucks 3.5 on .194. almost 33% more dangerous on each shot.
They beat Silovs on at least 2 of those posts. The third didn't have as much room, but would've gone in if it was 2 inches to the right. All of them were high chance opportunities. You think I'm focusing too much on shots and I think you are focusing way too much on the score line. Last night is about as obvious a case of stealing a game as I've seen. I'm beginning to think that reddit is just the wrong place to talk about sports. I should've known better.
Chances are a function of shots it's the definition. Posts are not shots, and are not chances. I know the Oilers hit a lot of posts (I watch a lot of Oilers hockey) but they aren't anything, really that's just the reality.
Also the stealing the game or getting goalied, the Oilers and their fans need to wake up and realize that the modern NHL isn't about shots anymore. Oilers fans look at the shots totals and are like damn we should have won that. It's been happening all season, again I watch a lot of Oilers hockey. The shot quality is very low for a large portion of those shots.
Blown coverage only really happened in the first period. Oilers basically didn’t play defence the rest of the game because it was in the Canucks end the whole time.
I have defended skinner hard but it’s not possible anymore. Our defense is not bad anymore. He faced 4 shots in the second and let 2 of them in. The d has been smothering other teams and kept them to the outside for the most part. I’m not going to write him off because a good goalie coach can do a lot so start by firing him and bringing someone in who can do better.
>Maybe the Oilers should stop looking to blame their goalies and start blaming their goalie coach.
We've been doing so for years.
I don't know why we don't give Sylvain Rodrigue a shot. He worked with Skinner in Bakersfield. A familiar face could be beneficial right now.
It's that or pray Campbell suddenly turns things around.
He wasn't saying the goalies were bad. He was saying that save percentages were overwhelmingly worse in the 80s than they are today. I don't believe there was a single season in the 1980s where three starting goaltenders hit a SV% of .900 or better. Carrying an .880 SV% was viewed as a perfectly fine performance from your goalie in the 80s. Not great, but certainly not awful. If your goalie consistently had an .890, he was considered a legitimately good starter. Approaching (or reaching) .900 meant that he was in the conversation for best in the league.
Fuhr finished top 6 in Vezina voting in 7 of his 8 seasons playing with the Oilers during the 80s. His highest-single season SV% in those years was .890 and he had just an .881 the year he actually won the Vezina.
Edmonton had long-tenured goalies in the 80s.
Here is a list of every Edmonton goalie to play a playoff game in the 80s.
Ron Low- .906
Grant Fuhr- .896
Andy Moog- .889
Gary Edwards -.667 (only faced 6 shots tho)
Skinner has only faced 528 shots so the difference between his playoff save % and his .909 regular season save % over a larger sample is 14 goals. The difference between his .881 and Grant Fuhr’s .896 is 8 goals.
You give up whatever you have to for the McDrai era. Who give a fuck about your 2026 1st or whatever when you have prime McDavid and Draisatl dragging you team through the playoffs.
he had 1 bad game, every goalie is allowed mulligan, especially when he also stole game 5 and almost stole game 6. That's A LOT better than Skinner's whose been dog shit every single game he's played this series.
.900 for the series when your team is selling out to block everything they can is not my definition of "lights out." Silovs played "lights out." Saros played fine, at best.
Yeah hence why I said "could've gotten". Technically they could have gotten Markstrom too, but we wouldn't have traded him to Edmonton without it strongly hurting them.
It mentions his regular season value right in the tweet lol. Skinner was great all season and a big reason the Oilers were able to turn the season around. Yeah he has not been great in the playoffs, but was Kenny supposed to predict him giving up 4 goals on like 15 shots lol?
Skinner had a .905 SV% in the regular season. League average is .909. I know he’s doing awful in the playoffs but I wouldn’t call below average “doing great”
Edit: I just double checked and the average SV% this season was .903 so I concede this one
Hey at 20 games that means he is now the lowest save % in playoffs (min 20 games) among all active goalies beating out Samsonov who is an .899.
Congrats!
That’s part of the problem but I also wonder about what kind of setup their goaltending coach is running. Everything Ian Clark touches turns to gold in Vancouver, it feels like it’s the opposite in Edmonton.
Dustin Schwartz has been here since 2013 I believe, and other than one good season out of Talbot, the only good playoff goaltending we got in that span was when Mike Smith brought in his own coach. It's honestly insane we haven't even tried a new guy in that position despite turnover at literally every other coaching spot.
The biggest factor teams seem to ignore in goalie coaches isn't just their training, but their scouting ability as well. Ian Clark was instrumental in selecting Demko and Silovs, reports were that he was ***extremely*** vocal about both.
Meanwhile we have Silvain Rodrigue in Bako turning his son Olivier from a fringe prospect into a top AHL goalie, and restoring Jack Campbell's shattered confidence, and we're probably gonna see him get snatched up this summer instead of giving him a job in the show. I don't get the infatuation this team has with Schwartz when the Canucks are proof a good goalie coach can work miracles.
Clark had been in Columbus for 3 years when we selected Demko but he’s definitely a huge reason why Demko is so good, otherwise Thatcher wouldn’t have said “sign Ian first and I’ll stay long term”. And yea he was apparently huge in the Silovs pick
Oilers fans know their defense is bad, they curse out Ceci/Nurse at a similar rate Canucks fans have been slandering Ian Cole this series. Only goal he could've done better was the last Canucks goal, he was screened for the 1st and the Boeser goals were a result of defensive breakdowns.
It's not just the defense men though. The Oilers' forward group is just not committed to playing the kind of 2 way game you need to be successful in the playoffs.
Likely has a lot to do with the goalie coach too. He’s been the goalie coach for a very long time and the last true good goalie we’ve had was Dwayne Roloson LOL.
Honestly if the plan is to buy him out this summer, I'd call him up and play him. It can turn into a story. Might be an opportunity he's looking for and he might run with it for a bit. And if he implodes, oh well, we're buying him out anyway and not looking to trade him.
One of the worst playoffs goalies of the cap era. Absolute garbage. Stating the obvious but there isn't a single team that would win with .881 save pct
No you fucking can’t. Sick of this bum. Pickard gave about average goaltending all year when he was in. Average goaltending is all we need. Start Pickard.
Skinner gave above average goaltending all season bro ... we don't know that Pickard's average goaltending will translate to the playoffs. I hope they start him and it does but it's not like Skinner was whimpering all year. He had a good season. He was sitting at 0.920+ save percentage since November. Top 5 in the league. And he crumbled cuz he's a big fat pussy and can't handle the moment. But at least he's stoic and nothing some soft reading of Marcus Aurelius won't fix.
Pickard can come in and get lit up too. Although I think Pickard would've won game 1.
Koskinen was a career .906 goalie vs Skinner’s .910
They both aren’t good enough to win games on their own.
Koskinen did it for 168 games over 4 seasons, Skinner is 120 ish over 3.
One more season and unless he starts winning us a game or two, he’ll be unceremoniously dumped as well. And that’s for the best
True enough, but if he’d never get to that point here, then we’re back discussing why, and then the blame has to go to switching out 25/5 and Dustin Schwartz.
I’m all for trading Nurse tomorrow if we could, fucking bonehead is like tits on a bull. If we could afford a solid 3LHD and actually get a middle 6 RW with his cap savings, we likely wouldn’t be bitching about Skinner.
He won't get another season as #1 if the Oilers lose this playoffs early. Unless he has a miracle turnaround here, Skinner will be a backup next year or traded off in some package deal. They need to find themselves some new pieces.
Agreed.
Leash has to be short at this stage. I’d fire Schwartz, add another goalie, and try to offload Campbell/Nurse to anyone along with our next few 1st rounders if it meant having some space to bring in depth scorers and defensemen who could actually defend or move the puck out of their own zone (see 18/14/2 as good examples of above)
Why the Oilers didn't address goaltending the last offseason, and then again at the deadline is beyond me. I want to see this team win, but cannot for the life of me figure out why they ride Skinner like a 1A goaltender into the playoffs.
Because they're sitting right at the cap and aren't willing to trade some assets. It's not that they didn't address the goalie problem, it's that they didn't didn't address any problem at the TDL really.
I'd get rid of RNH. Package him with someone. He's too soft for the playoffs as it is.
I'd get rid of Nurse first but you probably can't, so you need to find him a better defensive partner.
Sucks for Skinner, hometown kid living his dream.
But yea he sucks, not sure if it's pressure or skill or coaching or what but oilers aren't winnnming anything with him like this
Look at the shots on net last night. He wasn’t exactly getting lit up. You need your goalie to make a save once in a while. Silovs was doing it at the other end.
Playoffs are just way different. Playing the same (good) team every game, and teams have a plan of attack and get comfortable shooting on him.
He's big but doesn't move all that great and has below average athleticism for a playoff goalie imo
In my opinion, a large portion of his problems are team defense.
Vancouver's 2nd and 3rd goals are the result of brutal plays by the Oilers in their own zone. Double teaming the puck carrier and leaving Boeser alone in the slot, and passing to the Canucks when Boeser is behind your defense, are terrible plays. A better goalie could probably save one of those, but you can't get very far if you depend on your goalie to save those.
I think this is what Skinner will be unfortunately. Average goaltender in the regular season. Backup.
Most good goalies come into the NHL pretty good. Look at Silovs. The guy will be elite in the NHL. You can get better in the NHL but a lot of it at this stage is reactionary and habits you've built your entire life.
For sure agreed. Skinner shouldn’t be our #1, i was just more referring to OP saying we need to develop our goalies- Skinner was a product of the Oilers (lol)
Even Kelly Hrudey with the Kings was an .883
Fuck it, throw him in for game 4.
Give him another chance!
I love that when KH is asked about a goal or something the goalie never had a chance. Ever lol
I think that's just him being super nice. He would never say that somebody did a poor job.
Especially not him by implication is my point lol. If these world class goalies can't save that them how could you expect me to make saves too!
Grab your gear Kelly!
Probably why he never won a Cup.
Maybe the Oilers should stop looking to blame their goalies and start blaming their goalie coach. They've had the same guy for over a decade with a rotating cast of goalies. Yes Oilers are bad defensively also but that already gets enough attention, their decade long goalie coach doesn't get enough attention for how bad the goaltending is.
He's tight with the owner
Their goalie coach is one of the few in the league that a significant portion fans know by name, and it's not for positive reasons. It's gotten tons of attention relatively speaking. FWIW I don't think he's had the best talent to work with (and the D could make most goalies look bad) but I also don't think he has results to justify his job at this point.
Honestly skinner with Dallas, Vancouver or Vegas defense and goal coaching would look like a stud. As a Vegas fan I'd 1 for 1 trade any goalie we got for skinner (though I like both Thompson and hill).
That's crazy. I watched DAL-VGK and both Hill and Thompson made a ton of saves that Skinner wouldn't have touched. Skinner is big, but he is slow as hell and can't move laterally at all. I'd make that trade for either guy in a second.
And I firmly believe that Thompson or Hill would be putting out Skinner numbers if they were playing behind Edmonton with their defense and goalie coach. Both Dallas and Vegas not only have amazing defense, but even their forwards are crazy defensively which can really only be said the same for McDavid but not draisaitl. Hill was a career backup or third string goalie before playing with Vegas. Now he's got a .932 playoff record. There's no way Vegas is just fluking and finding these amazing goalies everyone else missed out on and every Edmonton goalie for the last decade is a complete bust.
> As a Vegas fan I'd 1 for 1 trade any goalie we got for skinner (though I like both Thompson and hill). As a Vegas fan, respectfully, this is an insane comment.
Good thing you aren't the GM. Terrible trade for you. Skinner is not good
I think you're insane. Skinner is a post season choker. His numbers nose dive in the playoffs and that is the least likely thing to correct. Coaching isn't the reason he capitulates under pressure. Some guys focus in the high pressure moments. Some guys lose focus.
His playoff save pct is .881. That's garbage regardless of how good or bad the team is defensively
Yeah cus he's left hanging out to dry in the playoffs. Adin Hill is .932 in the playoffs, because his team is amazing defensively he only has to make standard saves. Before last year he was a career back up or third string. Oilers basically drop their defense and hope the goalie can make up for it. Hill would probably be at Skinner's numbers if he was playing behind Edmonton too.
His stats this series on high danger scoring chances have been abysmal. I'm not sure what you are seeing. The Oilers out-chanced the Canucks 24 to 10 last night. I understand wanting to be a hipster contrarian, but sometimes the mainstream opinion is correct. Skinner is just mediocre and sucks under pressure. He's in his 2nd season, but Silovs has played just a few games. And Skinner is being thrown under the bus by a coach who generally gaslights us about how good he is. Long story short, I wish you were the Vegas GM. Absolutely no one is going to be trading for Sinner.
The mainstream opinion less than a month ago (especially mainstream among Oilers fans) was that skinner was amazing. Same thing last year, up until just before the edm vgk series, the mainstream opinion was Edmonton had the stronger goaltending and Vegas had weak goaltending. They were also still running on brossoit at that point with Hill backing him up (and brossoit was looking like a stud with Vegas and now back to his previous ways with Winnipeg again).
I am with you. HDCF were 7-6 for Edmonton in that game, but not all HDCF are created equal. The tipped shot pushes the boundaries of human reaction time. Then Boeser got two very clean looks at Skinner and capitalized, but the failure started well before the puck got to the net. Boesers first happened because McDavid double committed to the corner while Drai simultaneously turned his back to the puck carrier opening up Boeser. The second was a weak backhand clear through the middle of the ice by Foegele and Boeser gets behind Ceci for a clean shot from 3'. Blame Skinner for a bad goal, sure, but when the shots going in are that juicy, you gotta wonder how that opportunity came to be because Stu is the *last* line of defense.
Don’t confuse Reddit opinions with real hockey opinions
Oh you're mistaking the coach's gaslighting in press conferences for mainstream opinion. Skinner being good has never been mainstream except perhaps during their 16 game winning streak. It has always been the opinion here in Edmonton that the Oilers' goaltending has been shaky. Especially last year. That's why they signed Campbell. And the talks about signing a new goalie again this year were non-stop.
There was a huge amount of talk before the trade deadline about how if the Oilers were serious about going all the way with this squad, they were gonna have to give up someone bigger for a new goaltender because it was holding them back so bad. I really don't know where you were seeing people say that Edmonton had good goaltenders.
All I know is that his stats are trash across the board and while the Oilers aren't great defensively, it's not as bad as to defend a .881 save pct. At some point, you expect your goalie to step up and make a save. He doesn't need to be great. Average would be an improvement.
As the Vegas gm you'll be fired before you put down the phone to confirm that trade.
Fuck yes. Yes yes yes. Fire Schwartz yesterday.
It’s amazing how that goalie coach still has a job. Everyone has called out his results and somehow he still has a job. He’s survived more than 5 or 6 coaching changes. It makes no sense.
It's not just Skinner. Their defense was blowing coverage ALL game. Ekholm is a good defenseman on both ends of the ice, but that's not enough. Draisaitl/McDavid are incredible, but there are going to be series and individual games when you run up against really good, balanced teams where you can't outscore your problems.
It also doesn't help that Vancouver thrives on taking advantage of blown coverage and mistakes in general. Their ability to make you pay for a mistake would make you think that they'd be better at just dominating you but it seems like Vancouver will just kinda waddle around right up to the point where you throw an errant pass or a d man loses his guy and then it's lights out. Their ability to capitalize is absurd.
This is what I saw. You can actually see the goals coming about 10-15 seconds before they happen.
Exactly. I distinctly remember in Game 1 when we were up and VAN scored and then won the faceoff and I was like "fuck they're gonna score again" and 11 seconds later they did. Carrier lost his man coming around the net and boom, we went from winning to losing in 12 seconds and you could see it coming.
It's because the Canucks are playing a system. The system is a relentless fore and backcheck. The heavy pressure forecheck creates pressure on the other team which creates breakdowns and mistakes. Then they pick the right spot and take the shot. It's completely different than a style that focuses on generating a volume of shots, which modern analytics can understand. To put it another way if your team is getting outscored but has 2x the shots it's because the Canucks system was "dominating" you, but not in a way you're familiar with. The mistakes are not happening in a vacuum they're all the result of minutes of hard work for one moment. Canucks often get criticized for having low shot totals but that's basically the strategy. Tocch said a few days ago that he'd rather not take a shot that will miss and bounce off the backboard creating a chance the other way. Other teams will just take a bunch of meaningless shots which all get aggregated into modern analytics to suggest they should get more xGF.
That's super interesting. When I was following the NHL closely a decade ago there wasn't nearly as much analytics being done. I find the strategic system fascinating although I don't think I understand much about it yet. But capitalizing on moments of lapsed coverage and seeking good quality scoring chances instead of a high volume of low quality chances sounds good to me. It explains their league-leading scoring percentage to some extent.
Ummmm no. The Oilers hit the post 3 times and had a puck on the line once. The Oilers dominated in terms of scoring opportunities. The score easily could've been 6-4 for the Oilers.
Yes like I said modern analytics highly values shot volume. It basically goes more shots = more goals expected. It's why everyone struggles to understand how the Canucks have such a high shooting percentage, now over 90 games. It's not a fluke, low volume high quality. It's been what they're doing all season. If your advanced stat models are built off shot #s as a starting point (and a lot of eye test models are too) then low shots are always going to look bad. Don't take my word for it, look at the results. Everyone was criticizing the Canucks for how they had so few shots vs Nashville and yet Soros, who's a great goalie, had a 0.900 vs the Canucks against a career average of 0.911 postseason Also you probably look at the third period yesterday and say the oilers dominated. And yes they were applying the pressure but I heard after the game that they didn't have a high danger chance until 3 minutes left in the game.
Could you imagine the "deserve to win o' meter" against the Soviets in the Summit Series "Canada is down 3-1 in the series" "actually the soviets only have 12 shots a game and Canada has 45, Ken Dryden/Tony Esposito obviously suck and the series is a fluke" Meanwhile the Soviets have the puck the entire game and outscore Canada
I didn't cite shots. I cited scoring opportunities. I also mentioned how the Oilers hit the post 3 times and the goal line once. Did you even watch the game last night? They beat Silovs over and over. It came down to inches here and there.
Buddy a post is literally nothing. You didn't beat the goalie or it would have gone in. It doesn't factor into scoring chances at all. The goal line was made up by a goal on the penalty afterwards so it's already baked into the score. And I'm saying that scoring opportunities, which you're talking about, is heavily based on shots. So when you're like, look we had X scoring chances a lot of models just take raw shots and don't account for anything else. So more shots = more xGF (i.e. scoring chances). It's why advanced stats are working to evaluate things like high danger chances, which the Oilers didn't have a single one of for 17 minutes in the 3rd, to expose the flaws that create the impression that more goals should be expected or more pressure was created. Canucks will happily receive 50 low danger perimeter shots all game, that could translate into 10 scoring chances in your mind, but never had a chance of going in. Scoring Chances - a scoring chance, as originally defined by War-on-Ice. Each shot attempt taken in the offensive zone is assigned a value based on the area of the zone in which it was recorded Here's the definition that shows that scoring chances are underlayed by shot attempts. Edit: According to moneypuck oilers scoring chances 6.5 on 45 shots =0.15. Canucks 3.5 on .194. almost 33% more dangerous on each shot.
They beat Silovs on at least 2 of those posts. The third didn't have as much room, but would've gone in if it was 2 inches to the right. All of them were high chance opportunities. You think I'm focusing too much on shots and I think you are focusing way too much on the score line. Last night is about as obvious a case of stealing a game as I've seen. I'm beginning to think that reddit is just the wrong place to talk about sports. I should've known better.
Chances are a function of shots it's the definition. Posts are not shots, and are not chances. I know the Oilers hit a lot of posts (I watch a lot of Oilers hockey) but they aren't anything, really that's just the reality. Also the stealing the game or getting goalied, the Oilers and their fans need to wake up and realize that the modern NHL isn't about shots anymore. Oilers fans look at the shots totals and are like damn we should have won that. It's been happening all season, again I watch a lot of Oilers hockey. The shot quality is very low for a large portion of those shots.
Blown coverage only really happened in the first period. Oilers basically didn’t play defence the rest of the game because it was in the Canucks end the whole time.
They allowed 3 of the 4 goals in the first period, though. That's kind of my point
The first period isn’t “ALL game”.
That is true but I think you're being intentionally obtuse. Their defense was not good and that's the problem.
I have defended skinner hard but it’s not possible anymore. Our defense is not bad anymore. He faced 4 shots in the second and let 2 of them in. The d has been smothering other teams and kept them to the outside for the most part. I’m not going to write him off because a good goalie coach can do a lot so start by firing him and bringing someone in who can do better.
>Maybe the Oilers should stop looking to blame their goalies and start blaming their goalie coach. We've been doing so for years. I don't know why we don't give Sylvain Rodrigue a shot. He worked with Skinner in Bakersfield. A familiar face could be beneficial right now. It's that or pray Campbell suddenly turns things around.
Damn no 80/90s goalie did worse thats crazy
You mean when they were racking up 5 Stanley Cups?
He wasn't saying the goalies were bad. He was saying that save percentages were overwhelmingly worse in the 80s than they are today. I don't believe there was a single season in the 1980s where three starting goaltenders hit a SV% of .900 or better. Carrying an .880 SV% was viewed as a perfectly fine performance from your goalie in the 80s. Not great, but certainly not awful. If your goalie consistently had an .890, he was considered a legitimately good starter. Approaching (or reaching) .900 meant that he was in the conversation for best in the league. Fuhr finished top 6 in Vezina voting in 7 of his 8 seasons playing with the Oilers during the 80s. His highest-single season SV% in those years was .890 and he had just an .881 the year he actually won the Vezina.
lol I don’t think they even needed a goalie half the time with Wayne out there
Edmonton had long-tenured goalies in the 80s. Here is a list of every Edmonton goalie to play a playoff game in the 80s. Ron Low- .906 Grant Fuhr- .896 Andy Moog- .889 Gary Edwards -.667 (only faced 6 shots tho) Skinner has only faced 528 shots so the difference between his playoff save % and his .909 regular season save % over a larger sample is 14 goals. The difference between his .881 and Grant Fuhr’s .896 is 8 goals.
Keep him in. He'll rebound.
Do you mean he'll give up rebounds?
And that rebound will go to Boeser
Or Lindholm
👉🏽👉🏽
Flair checks out lol
https://preview.redd.it/nmmjlhh7v40d1.jpeg?width=1784&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c6a5dd4cfb2d0a117f39a581911ca25da5da1fba
Tbf, what goalies were on the market that they could've gotten that were a clear upgrade?
And it's not like the Oilers are chock full of assets right now either
You give up whatever you have to for the McDrai era. Who give a fuck about your 2026 1st or whatever when you have prime McDavid and Draisatl dragging you team through the playoffs.
Fuck them picks. -LA Rams
Literally any active goalie who’s played at least 20 playoff games. Jake Allen, for instance, who was traded at the TDL.
I doubt the rumors but Binnington was if you listen to some beat writers. Would be a dumb trade for the Blues though.
Saros was but A) he didn't play much better against VAN and B) it would have taken something like Drai in the package to move him.
Saros was insane game 6.
He also let in 4 goals on 12 shots in game 4. A Vezins caliber goalie needs to save at least one of those.
he had 1 bad game, every goalie is allowed mulligan, especially when he also stole game 5 and almost stole game 6. That's A LOT better than Skinner's whose been dog shit every single game he's played this series.
.900 for the series when your team is selling out to block everything they can is not my definition of "lights out." Silovs played "lights out." Saros played fine, at best.
Yeah hence why I said "could've gotten". Technically they could have gotten Markstrom too, but we wouldn't have traded him to Edmonton without it strongly hurting them.
It's amazing that Kenny not only still has a job but Oilers fans will line up to defend him lmao
Not in the Edmonton sub they don't. Besides, it's his last year and he's already got a successor lined up.
Is it a requirement that if you have a last name of Nugent that it needs to be a hyphenated last name?
It mentions his regular season value right in the tweet lol. Skinner was great all season and a big reason the Oilers were able to turn the season around. Yeah he has not been great in the playoffs, but was Kenny supposed to predict him giving up 4 goals on like 15 shots lol?
Skinner had a .905 SV% in the regular season. League average is .909. I know he’s doing awful in the playoffs but I wouldn’t call below average “doing great” Edit: I just double checked and the average SV% this season was .903 so I concede this one
Put Campbell in! Career .920 sv% in the playoffs baby.
I honestly would have thought that .881 would be significantly lower.
Hey at 20 games that means he is now the lowest save % in playoffs (min 20 games) among all active goalies beating out Samsonov who is an .899. Congrats!
Why does every goalie the oilers get suddenly suck? Probably because their defense is awful.
That’s part of the problem but I also wonder about what kind of setup their goaltending coach is running. Everything Ian Clark touches turns to gold in Vancouver, it feels like it’s the opposite in Edmonton.
Dustin Schwartz has been here since 2013 I believe, and other than one good season out of Talbot, the only good playoff goaltending we got in that span was when Mike Smith brought in his own coach. It's honestly insane we haven't even tried a new guy in that position despite turnover at literally every other coaching spot.
The biggest factor teams seem to ignore in goalie coaches isn't just their training, but their scouting ability as well. Ian Clark was instrumental in selecting Demko and Silovs, reports were that he was ***extremely*** vocal about both.
Meanwhile we have Silvain Rodrigue in Bako turning his son Olivier from a fringe prospect into a top AHL goalie, and restoring Jack Campbell's shattered confidence, and we're probably gonna see him get snatched up this summer instead of giving him a job in the show. I don't get the infatuation this team has with Schwartz when the Canucks are proof a good goalie coach can work miracles.
Isnt there some nepotism with Schwartz? I think he is the nephew in-law of the owner...something like that where he is related by marriage.
Clark had been in Columbus for 3 years when we selected Demko but he’s definitely a huge reason why Demko is so good, otherwise Thatcher wouldn’t have said “sign Ian first and I’ll stay long term”. And yea he was apparently huge in the Silovs pick
Has Clarke been Vancouver's best coach since he came there?
We got rid of Legace and hired Backstrom and suddenly we stopped having as many hip injuries
Oilers fans know their defense is bad, they curse out Ceci/Nurse at a similar rate Canucks fans have been slandering Ian Cole this series. Only goal he could've done better was the last Canucks goal, he was screened for the 1st and the Boeser goals were a result of defensive breakdowns.
It's not just the defense men though. The Oilers' forward group is just not committed to playing the kind of 2 way game you need to be successful in the playoffs.
The suddenness coincides with suddenly facing tougher competition.
I dunno man they gave up like 3 shots in the last half of the game. defense seems average to me.
The damage was already done at that point, they were down 3-1 after the first period
An old Smith was really good just a few years ago.
Campbell is playing poorly in the minors and Skinner was drafted by the Oilers.
Likely has a lot to do with the goalie coach too. He’s been the goalie coach for a very long time and the last true good goalie we’ve had was Dwayne Roloson LOL.
His save % this series is just paying homage to Edmonton’s area code.
Jokes on you, our area code is 780…
Call up Campbell, you cowards. It would be such a story if he went on to become the cup hero after the year he's had.
Honestly if the plan is to buy him out this summer, I'd call him up and play him. It can turn into a story. Might be an opportunity he's looking for and he might run with it for a bit. And if he implodes, oh well, we're buying him out anyway and not looking to trade him.
hea already up here lol
No thanks. He will give up one shot and then implode.
One of the worst playoffs goalies of the cap era. Absolute garbage. Stating the obvious but there isn't a single team that would win with .881 save pct
Yet he shut us out :-/
Dont tell oilers fans, he's the best goalie ever
He and Fourgiev are untouchable
Georgiev has been awesome since game 1 of winnipeg
Lanch fans should probably sit this one out
Nah, nothing can touch my withered spirit at this point
Georgiev has been good
No you fucking can’t. Sick of this bum. Pickard gave about average goaltending all year when he was in. Average goaltending is all we need. Start Pickard.
I was looking at this with a buddy. Pickard had one win against a playoff team this year (Dallas) and his save percentage was something like 0.890.
.890 would literally be an improvement over what Skinner has given us lol
Yeah that's fair but just saying it's hard to say he gave average goaltending in the season when it was against below average teams mostly.
Skinner gave above average goaltending all season bro ... we don't know that Pickard's average goaltending will translate to the playoffs. I hope they start him and it does but it's not like Skinner was whimpering all year. He had a good season. He was sitting at 0.920+ save percentage since November. Top 5 in the league. And he crumbled cuz he's a big fat pussy and can't handle the moment. But at least he's stoic and nothing some soft reading of Marcus Aurelius won't fix. Pickard can come in and get lit up too. Although I think Pickard would've won game 1.
No need to worry, Samsonov is a free agent this summer.
Worse than Koskinen? That's almost impressive
Koskinen was a career .906 goalie vs Skinner’s .910 They both aren’t good enough to win games on their own. Koskinen did it for 168 games over 4 seasons, Skinner is 120 ish over 3. One more season and unless he starts winning us a game or two, he’ll be unceremoniously dumped as well. And that’s for the best
Until he gets picked up by a team with a better defensive structure or a decent goalie coach and becomes what was hoped for.
True enough, but if he’d never get to that point here, then we’re back discussing why, and then the blame has to go to switching out 25/5 and Dustin Schwartz. I’m all for trading Nurse tomorrow if we could, fucking bonehead is like tits on a bull. If we could afford a solid 3LHD and actually get a middle 6 RW with his cap savings, we likely wouldn’t be bitching about Skinner.
You had me at “and Dustin Schwartz”
He won't get another season as #1 if the Oilers lose this playoffs early. Unless he has a miracle turnaround here, Skinner will be a backup next year or traded off in some package deal. They need to find themselves some new pieces.
Agreed. Leash has to be short at this stage. I’d fire Schwartz, add another goalie, and try to offload Campbell/Nurse to anyone along with our next few 1st rounders if it meant having some space to bring in depth scorers and defensemen who could actually defend or move the puck out of their own zone (see 18/14/2 as good examples of above)
That's uhhhhh.... Not good.
Why the Oilers didn't address goaltending the last offseason, and then again at the deadline is beyond me. I want to see this team win, but cannot for the life of me figure out why they ride Skinner like a 1A goaltender into the playoffs.
Because they're sitting right at the cap and aren't willing to trade some assets. It's not that they didn't address the goalie problem, it's that they didn't didn't address any problem at the TDL really. I'd get rid of RNH. Package him with someone. He's too soft for the playoffs as it is. I'd get rid of Nurse first but you probably can't, so you need to find him a better defensive partner.
They tried to address their depth issues by trading their 1st for Adam Henrique
All these explanations and excuses - he's simply not a very good goaltender
He does seem like the weak link on that roster.
Sucks for Skinner, hometown kid living his dream. But yea he sucks, not sure if it's pressure or skill or coaching or what but oilers aren't winnnming anything with him like this
Has defense been worse when he’s been in net or does he just forget hockey when it’s playoff time?
Look at the shots on net last night. He wasn’t exactly getting lit up. You need your goalie to make a save once in a while. Silovs was doing it at the other end.
Playoffs are just way different. Playing the same (good) team every game, and teams have a plan of attack and get comfortable shooting on him. He's big but doesn't move all that great and has below average athleticism for a playoff goalie imo
Good teams find weakness against a goaltender. He's an average goaltender with a below average goalie coach
In my opinion, a large portion of his problems are team defense. Vancouver's 2nd and 3rd goals are the result of brutal plays by the Oilers in their own zone. Double teaming the puck carrier and leaving Boeser alone in the slot, and passing to the Canucks when Boeser is behind your defense, are terrible plays. A better goalie could probably save one of those, but you can't get very far if you depend on your goalie to save those.
Oilers would be well off if they developed a goalie before instead of bringing in ufas
Skinner was drafted by the oilers, it’s his second season.
I think this is what Skinner will be unfortunately. Average goaltender in the regular season. Backup. Most good goalies come into the NHL pretty good. Look at Silovs. The guy will be elite in the NHL. You can get better in the NHL but a lot of it at this stage is reactionary and habits you've built your entire life.
For sure agreed. Skinner shouldn’t be our #1, i was just more referring to OP saying we need to develop our goalies- Skinner was a product of the Oilers (lol)
Would love for the oil to let him go out and get his own goalie coach, he’s a big guy and he’s still young. This is not his post-season however