EDMONTON — Eventually, the pain we submerge wriggles to the surface.
Stuart Skinner, the homegrown backbone of the Edmonton Oilers’ valiant attempt to reverse-sweep the mighty Florida Panthers in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final, had comported himself well enough in the winner-take-all Game 7.
Show us a goalie who limits the opposition to two or less, and we’ll show you a goalie who gave his team a chance.
But with the series knotted at threes and the score bundled at ones, the championship was in next-goal-wins, next-lamp-haunts territory.
Sam Reinhart’s Cup clincher sailed short-side past Skinner. A routine angle shot, albeit from a 57-goal sniper, launched from beyond the dots. Skinner had time to prep for it, had eyes on it, and still that puck left him with a hung head.
“If I’m gonna be completely honest here, I thought I put it away quick,” Skinner reflected, one Cup Final later. “But definitely, internally, there was something. Something buried.”
Goaltenders train themselves to adopt a goldfish’s memory, but some moments are too big to be ignored. So, they come down with a case of elephant-itis.
“That’s kind of the easy way to do it. Instead of thinking about it and trying to process it, I stuffed it out,” said Skinner, as thoughtful and honest a player as you’ll find. “I’m normally pretty good with that stuff. I normally open up the wound pretty quickly. But it took me a little while.”
Skinner says the gutting disappointment of potentially being one save short of his dream didn’t “bite me in the butt” until midsummer.
His wife, Chloe, called him out — the way we sometimes need the people who know us best to do.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I’m totally fine.’ And she was like, ‘I don’t think you are,’” Skinner recalled.
“I mean, that’s what family is all about, right? Making sure that you’re OK and that you’re taken care of. And that opened the wound, and I was able to process it and take care of it.”
Chloe revealed this week on the Breaking the Ice podcast that the scrutiny on her husband had her concerned for their sons, Beau, age 2, and Darcy, four months, growing up in a hockey-mad market.
“Tale as old as time, the goalie is the punching bag a bit. This year definitely got intense. There was times where security had to be involved. My DMs can be filled with death threats towards the kids, to myself, from anonymous accounts — people hiding behind their screens,” Chloe said.
“It can get really ugly. People threatening if they ever see us, they’re going to take us out. It gets intense. And I’m making it lighthearted right now, but when I do read those, I get really scared, and I do obviously worry for the safety of my family and my young boys. It’s terrifying to think that there might be people out there who are going to hurt us over the result of a game. It is a little deranged.”
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With the Stanley Cup within reach, the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers are set to battle once again for hockey’s ultimate prize. Watch every game of the Final on Sportsnet and Sportsnet+.
Chloe describes Stuart as “the most resilient person in the whole world.” (Maybe it helps that Stuart doesn’t touch social media himself; he has muted all the nasty, cyber-bullying garbage lobbed by the @OilerzFans of the world. Chloe says she can’t help but scroll, however.)
The public has witnessed Skinner’s hardiness these past two post-seasons. Skinner got benched for multi-game stretches due to shaky performance in both four-round runs, only to rediscover his game in June.
Prior to Game 2’s double-overtime loss to the Panthers Friday, in which Brad Marchand snuck one five-hole, Skinner had ripped off five straight wins.
“Does he have a bad night every once in a while? Yes. I have a bad night. Connor has a bad night. Every player has a bad night,” Leon Draisaitl said.
“The one thing about Stuey that I’ve always really admired is his ability to bounce back. He’s always, always, always a goalie that when he has an off night, you know his next game is going to be good. And that’s a really good characteristic to have in any player — but especially a goalie.”
Considering Skinner’s approach to that of other goaltenders with whom he’s shared a room, veteran Adam Henrique placed the Oilers netminder somewhere in the middle of “crazy, wacky goalie to, like, completely normal guy.”
An Oilers fan representing the Oilers with a chance to bring a Cup to Canada for the first time in 32 years? The spotlight doesn’t get much brighter.
“Like, it’s got to be one of the most pressure-packed positions in all of sports. To get to know him and see how he deals with it, he does a great job of the mental aspect,” Henrique said. “Doing what he needs to be able to be himself.”
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Skinner’s ultimate bounceback took place this summer as he unpacked the most dramatic loss of his roller-coaster career. He meditated to calm his busy mind. He visualized. He journaled his feelings, a habit that stretches back six years. He engaged in long talks with Chloe and his coaches and his friends.
“Just to get it out, word vomit a bit. Let all the emotion out of it,” Skinner said. “I wasn’t looking at it so much as like hometown kid, any of that. It’s just something that you’ve wanted to win your whole life, right? Something that you’ve worked for your whole life.
“Maybe a little bit tougher because it’s a Canadian market. You know all Canada is watching you. All Canada is disappointed in you. And, nature of the game, you get some heat.”
The final stage of dealing with the pain?
Rewatching Game 7 in its entirety.
As training camp neared, Skinner relived the sadness in Sunrise. He’s not quite sure why he sat there for a rerun.
Maybe for analysis.
Maybe for motivation.
Probably to separate the action from the passion.
“Great game,” Skinner can say now, objectively. “Sometimes after a game, you feel like you played amazing, and you watch it and you’re like, ‘OK, you’re not that good.’ And then sometimes it’s the opposite. You feel terrible, and you watch it, you’re like, ‘OK, well, you actually played pretty good.’ So, watching it just took the emotions out of it.”
The roster trying to right 2024’s wrong is largely identical, but Skinner described the feeling around the 2025 Oilers as different.
Skinner got “googly eyes” when he saw the silver chalice trotted out to the ice for Game 1 last June, then Edmonton got shut out 3-0. This year, the unknowns are understood.
Hitting rock bottom can, in a way, be freeing.
“All series long, you get so caught up in the emotions of it. There’s some sleepless nights. It’s hard to nap, hard to eat sometimes,” Skinner explained. “I learned a lot about myself in that scenario, and I’m really grateful for that experience that I got last year, because this year I feel pretty well the complete opposite.
“It’s different because we’ve already done it. We’ve already gone through it. And to be honest, we’ve gone through the worst-case scenario, losing Game 7.”
As fiercely as Skinner dedicates himself to technical excellence, he works equally hard on the psychology of sporting success.
He’s not so precious as to duck reporters on game days. He won’t pretend that when the puck next drops on this best-of-five that it’ll be just another game. And he’ll embrace the idea of lifting the Stanley Cup over his head next week.
“Yeah, I’ve definitely visualized that. You might think I’m a little wild, but I visualize both parts — losing again and being able to win again,” said Skinner. “I’ve always been a huge fan of the Oilers. And as fate had it, I’m able to play for them.”
Fate wasn’t so kind to the hometown boy last summer. But perhaps fate is just deferring the happy ending. Perhaps the pain only enhances the glory.
“I would love that,” Skinner smiled.
“I mean, being able to grow up in Edmonton, being able to win the Cup in Edmonton? I think that’d be pretty sweet. What do you think?”
