CRANBERRY TOWNSHIP, Pa. — The good thing about Stuart Skinner’s first start as a Pittsburgh Penguin tonight is that there isn’t much subtext around the game.
Only the fact that Skinner will face Tristan Jarry, for whom he was traded on Friday along with Brett Kulak, and his old team in his debut as a Penguin. And we suppose you could say that Leon Draisaitl hoping to score his 1,000th point against Skinner tonight is also a thing.
Then there is Sidney Crosby’s pursuit of the Penguins’ franchise scoring lead, where he trails a certain legend by just two points. That legend — the great Mario Lemieiux — will be on hand to witness it all.
So, there’s not much going on here, really….
“It’s funny. We’re ripping off the Band-Aid right away,” smiled Skinner, still dripping sweat from a morning skate, his Edmonton Oilers goalie mask propped up on his head above a Penguins practice set-up. “Which is good, thinking about it. I’d rather get it over with, but also to enjoy it too.
“I get to play my old teammates, and me and Brett get to do it together. That’s nothing but exciting.”
You’ve never met a more glass-half-full guy than Skinner, a local kid who grew up in Terwillegar, then clawed his way to the National Hockey League and two Stanley Cup Final appearances for his hometown team.
One minute he was scalping a ticket in the nosebleeds at Rexall Place to watch Ales Hemsky play, the next he was standing in the crease at Rogers Place in a Cup Final in front of 18,300 rabid locals, the weight of Oilers Nation resting on his six-foot-four frame.
And a moment later? He’s a Penguin.
“The dream was to be in the NHL, and here I am going to another incredible organization, another incredible team,” said Skinner, 27. “I’ve been to Stanley Cups a couple of times, obviously haven’t won one — so there’s a lot of hunger (within) this group that we want to go back there.
“For me, just the gratitude of being able to be in the NHL,” he said. “I got traded, and I get to go through all the things that I get to go through with my family, looking for a house and cars and all this fun stuff.
“It’s busy, but that sounds like a really lucky man to me. I’m very fortunate.”
Oilers GM Stan Bowman framed the Skinner deal more as a much needed change than a definitive upgrade in goaltending: “It’s not so much a comment on Stuart Skinner. We just felt it’s time for something different here.”
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That’s probably a bit of a half-truth.
Edmonton needed change after two failed Cup runs, undoubtedly. But they needed change in a certain place — their crease.
Is it fair that it was Skinner, and surprisingly Kulak, who were separated from the herd and sent packing?
“There’s a lot of noise, a lot of noise around goalies. I don’t know if it’s fair, if it’s not fair,” Skinner mused. “It’s just part of the business. It’s a trade that needed to be done, and I think it’s good for both teams.
“To be honest, I care more about where my work is (now), and being able to be on a new team and this exciting moment. So I’m not really thinking about if it’s fair or not to me.”
For Kulak, this is trade No. 3 and team No. 4. He is less emotional about it all, and though it came as more of a surprise to him than Skinner, he can process the whole thing with less emotion.
“There’s pressure on both sides, the players and management. You can’t just keep running the same program and hoping for everything to change,” he said from his dressing-room stall, right next to Erik Karlsson’s seat. “Sometimes new moves, they bring a different spark into the dressing room and change the dynamic of the team a little bit. It’s a case of looking for that.”
There was a moment Tuesday when a Pittsburgh reporter inquired whether the trade had hit Skinner by surprise. He smiled, shot a quick side glance at an Edmonton face in the crowd, and said politely, “In Edmonton, I don’t know if you guys know, but there’s been rumours probably going on for the last five years. So it’s not like I really got caught by surprise.”
It’s a shame, really, that the Stu Skinner story never quite got consummated.
How cool would it have been for an Edmonton-born goalie to ride down Jasper Ave. in a Stanley Cup parade? Like Grant Fuhr did, or Mark Messier?
And how close was Skinner to being that guy, taking the Oilers to two Cup Finals — with some timely help from Calvin Pickard — falling one win short in 2024, and two wins shy last spring?
Perhaps one more Connor McDavid moment, or one more timely glove save might have done it in that fateful Game 7 in Sunrise? Maybe a team that rose to the challenge, rather than sunk away, when it found itself in a 2-2 series with home-ice advantage last June, could have gotten the job done?
Through it all, you can critique Skinner’s game, his east-to-west mobility, and his ability to steal a game that his skaters may not have deserved.
But what you can never say is that he wasn’t as decent a man — respectful, polite and an intelligent, deep-thinker — as we’ve had in Edmonton’s dressing room in a long time.
Or that he didn’t want to win every bit as badly as those 18,300 fans, and the thousands more who will now turn the rage-love towards Jarry.
“There’s not a moment that I didn’t try to do my best in Edmonton,” Skinner promised. “Perseverance, strength… Go down the list of what I tried to do for the organization, and more so for my teammate and coaches. I’m very proud of what I was able to do there.
“Could I have made an extra save or two? Absolutely. I’ll probably say that here,” he said, smiling at the gathered Pittsburgh media. “But that’s part of being a goalie, of being a person. But I always did my best, and I will never stop doing my best.
“I don’t have any regrets the way that I handled things.”
