NASHVILLE — The Edmonton Oilers‘ two goalies share two things in common so far this season — a .750 saves percentage and an 0-1 record.
But after allowing four goals on 16 shots in Saturday’s 4-3 loss to Vancouver, goalie Stuart Skinner looked us square in the eye and made his point.
“Numbers lie,” he said.
Yes, in a short sample size of two games — behind a team that has played soft defensively — he has a point.
But here’s another point: You can’t always have the second-best goalie on the ice and think you’re going to win a Stanley Cup.
So, here we are. Just two games in and wondering about the most important position on the ice.
Jack Campbell was unreal in pre-season, but meh in Game 1. Skinner relieved in Game 1, was decent at best, and wasn’t any better than that in his Game 2 start.
The team has not been good. We know that.
But neither has the goaltending. We know that as well.
Here’s the full quote from Skinner, whose early numbers (5.53 goals against) have fans and media rightly wondering about his start to the season:
“It’s fair to say that you want to have good stats, and look good for other people’s opinions. That’s all other people’s opinions on goaltenders,” Skinner said. “Goalies know how to play, and numbers lie. I thought I played well besides getting 16 shots and letting in four. It happens. I’m going to grow and move on.”
Grant Fuhr chose a different path, when he called Oilers fans “jerks” after a particularly bad start to one season early in his career. Mike Smith had his own coping mechanism: He’d let one in from centre ice and look at you like he wanted to beat your brains in when you asked him how it happened.
Curtis Joseph never thought he’s screwed up. Every seemingly bad goal had ticked off a pad or curved like a whiffle ball.
When asked about one long-range shot that rang off the iron, Bill Ranford once complained, “Now I’m supposed to stop the ones that are going wide as well?”
Just one start into his sophomore season, Skinner is finding his happy place in the inevitable media scrums that follow both outstanding performances, and the ones he has endured thus far this season.
On Saturday, after he was beaten by two close-in deflections, a Canucks two-on-zero from centre ice in, and a Sam Lafferty shot off the rush that came from below the circle — with Mattias Ekholm beaten handily on a straight-up one-on-one — you could sympathize with a guy who felt like he’d stopped all the stoppable ones.
Taken alone, I don’t blame a goalie for any of those four goals. But after a 4-3 loss and only 16 shots against, doesn’t everyone leave the rink asking the goalie to steal something?
A little highway robbery? A save that makes the highlights later that night?
“I thought I played a really good game — really good goals that were scored on me,” Skinner said. “Definitely want to look back on the fourth one (the Lafferty goal). I’m not really too exactly sure what happened. Besides that, the other three (were) pretty good goals. So I think I’m on my game. I feel like I’m in a really good spot.”
Goaltending isn’t the reason the Oilers have started their season 0-2. But Edmonton can’t continue to have the second-best goalie on the ice, the way Casey DeSmith and Adin Hill have done in three of Edmonton’s last four games, going back to last spring’s elimination.
The position is a hot-button item and it should be, after Skinner’s .883 saves percentage in the playoffs last season, and Campbell’s woes since he arrived in Edmonton.
The position can not just be about playing as well as the team on front of you, as DeSmith proved Saturday night when he stopped 37 pucks to Skinner’s 12.
Although we all know that a stout defensive posture can make it possible for names like Hill and Antti Niemi to be etched on the Stanley Cup, there have to be nights along the way where the goalies nab two points that the power play could not.
And there’s the concern in Edmonton, where they’ve allowed 12 goals in their season-opening back to back with the Canucks.
Can you have the second-best goaltending and still win when it counts? No, you can not.
We get it. The Oilers have scored one five-on-five goal so far this season.
They’ve been soft on defence, and the forwards have spent too much time on the perimeter. Alas, the goalies couldn’t bail them out.
Some would say it’s asking too much.
Others would argue, that’s what goalies are paid to do.
I’m not here to say it’s a problem — yet. But if it doesn’t get better, it will be more than just a problem for this Stanley Cup hopeful.
It will be their downfall.
