DEBATE: How the Edmonton Oilers should manage Stuart Skinner | Why this is his last chance

DEBATE: How the Edmonton Oilers should manage Stuart Skinner | Why this is his last chance

The Edmonton Oilers goalie room is a puzzle with no easy answers. On today’s edition of Locked on Oilers, how we’re going to make do with less. [Music] You are Locked On Oilers, your daily podcast on the Edmonton Oilers, part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. Hello everyone and welcome to this Wednesday edition of Locked On Oilers. I am your host Nick Seraris. This upcoming NHL season will be my 10th doing digital hockey content my fourth as a host on the Lockdown Podcast Network. And I want to thank everyone that is making Lockown Oilers their first listen of the day. Lockdown Oilers is a part of the Lockdown Podcast Network where we’ve got your team covered every single day. And on today’s show, everyone’s favorite subject, the Edmonton Oilers goalie room. So today’s show is broken up into three segments as always. Our opening segment, we will talk about Stuart Stuart Skinner from a narrative perspective and from a statistical perspective. Our second segment, same deal for Calvin Picker, narrative and statistics. Our final segment, we’ll talk about guys who aren’t presently with the organization. Which one I think makes more sense and tie a bow on what has been a very awkward off season for the goalies? Because we can be frank, we can be candid. This goalie room is not inspiring confidence and there is a pocket of Oiler fans who think it was an organizational failure that they did not at least try to upgrade one of these two spots. I was very adamant early in the offseason that they should have signed a third goalie whether that was Alex Lion, Alexander Gueorgv, if they wanted to go a little higher up, if they wanted to trade for somebody. The Oilers did have options in front of them, but now going into the 2025 2026 season. There is no ambiguity. This is the last dance for this goalie room. After this upcoming season, both Skinner and Pickard are unrestricted free agents. I can go out on a limb here, and not much of a limb. I think this is pretty safe to say the Oilers will not be bringing both guys back next summer. I think almost certainly the Oilers are going to need to introduce some new blood to this position group. Now, I am not one for playing prospects when it comes to goalies, especially for a team that is in the weeds like the Oilers are. I don’t think they would be particularly inclined to give a prospect goalie 30 to 40 starts next year, even in a true tandem with Steuart Skinner. So, we need to frame ourselves around this idea that this is the last chance Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard are going to have in Edmonton for now. Of course, should this upcoming season be uncat unfamiliar, should the Oilers goending room be a position of strength, I think there’s a conversation to be had about what changed environmentally or one of my favorite words, if it was an outlier season, which is absolutely possible that Stuart Skinner going into a contract year, he pulls a Darnell Nurse, he puts together a 910 save percentage, a 2.5 or six goals against, like a seven or eight goal save expected Nothing insane, but better than he’s done and just enough that he entices Stan Bowman to give him a contract extension because at face value, Steuart Skinner’s numbers are pretty mediocre. A 905 save percentage, a 2.72 goals against average, and a 9.87 goal saved above expected. And real quick on goal saved above expected, this is a means of qualifying or quantifying how difficult Stuart Skinner’s workload is. So based on the expected goals he faced over the last five, four and a half seasons where he’s played, he did get in one game in that fifth season, but his average goal saved above expected is 9.87. So an average an expected goalie who makes the only saves they’re supposed to would be zero. He has saved 9.87 goals saved above expected on average over the course of his three and a half, four seasons as an NHL starter. that is going to be in the lower echelon. And I don’t think people are going to be surprised to hear what I say next, but Steuart Skinner is probably not one of the 32 best goalies in the world. And that is an awkward position to be in if you’re Skinner because as we know, uh, Lena can attest to this. Connor Halbuck can attest to this. The perception of goalies is largely rooted to their win loss record. Lena Solar winning the Vzna Trophy a couple years ago for the Bruins the year they won the President’s Trophy. That was a largely by largely a byproduct of team success. One can make an argument Jeremy Swayman had better numbers on that same Bruins team, but he didn’t play as many games. So, there’s context. I think Connor Halabuk winning the heart trophy this past year as league MVP. Not a coincidence. That comes in conjunction with the team winning the President’s Trophy as well. The Vzna trophy is voted on by general managers. We know general managers are not always the best arbiters of talent. Whenever you read some of these anonymous anonymously sourced articles talking about the best players in the world, there’s always crazy quotes attributed to GMs about players who aren’t all of that good who get caught up in hype moments, who get caught up in aura. And I think Steuart Skinner is really a victim of his own success. And I’ve used that phrase quite a bit this off seasonason. My everyers have heard me say that a lot. The Oilers were not expecting Stuart Skinner to save their bacon the way he did two years ago, three years ago. They signed Jack Campbell that first day of free agency with the expectation that he was going to be the bellcow starter, that he was going to start 50 to 60 games for them for the next few seasons and they would hopefully bring along a prospect goalie in conjunction with him. The Oilers were never expecting Stuart Skinner to play as well as he did in Jack Campbellstead during that 2022 2023 season. Then one more time, they tried to put the tires back on Jack Campbell in going into 2324. I wouldn’t say that was ultimately what got Jay Woodcraftoft fired, but it it certainly didn’t help because Jack Campbell was broken and the Oilers I think and I don’t think this is a coincidence. I think the Oilers are a little gunshy when it comes to the goalie market because of their experience with Jack Campbell, because of their experience with Miko Koiskin and with Mike Smith, with Cam Talbot. And look, some of that is workload. I don’t think it’s a coincidence Cam Talbot started 72 games, the last goalie who will probably ever start more than 70 games in a season, and then had a decline, then had a physical decline. And look, Talbot’s still a passable NHL goalie at this stage of his career, but it is a curiosity to think about what could have been if they had managed Talbot a little more responsibly that first season, what the runway from there looked like. And instead of focusing on these one or twoear stop gaps, genuinely trying to solve the position long-term. And look, I’ll be fair, Ken Holland tried to do that with Jack Campbell. It didn’t work. They quickly realized it and they admitted their mistakes, so they get credit for that. And I do have to give credit for that because some GMs are stubborn. Some general managers, some decision makers, they will stubbornly see a bad signing through to the end because they can’t admit they were wrong because they care too much about saving face. They care too much about how they’re perceived. And that type of intellectual honesty is a challenge to admit you were wrong. But I do think ultimately it’s a sign of an accountable organization. And as a fan, as a content person, as somebody who is trained in journalistic ethics, that’s accountability. If I make a mistake on the show, I got to come out and tell you guys, otherwise I’m not credible. Otherwise, I’m not accountable. It’s not as good of a show. It’s important that people in positions of authority experts or pseudo experts give you reasons to trust them. It’s not just enough that they have their word or that they’ve read some Wikipedia articles. Are you in the trenches? Are you doing the statistical analysis? Do you admit when you make mistakes and it’s important teams do and Stuart Skinner is an is a fortunate mistake. The Oilers by virtue of the team around him have gotten to two straight Stanley Cup finals with him and an argument can be made if he were slightly better in either of those finals. Maybe you go the other way. Maybe some of those games go the other way and you win the whole thing and then we’re having a very different story because that’s all it takes. Aiden Hill, Jordan Bennington, those guys, they’ll have jobs basically forever because they won their one Stanley Cup. And some guys are able to parlay that a little better. Darcy Kempers put together a nice career. Braden Holy got a couple chances after leaving Washington, winning a cup there. He also had a Vzna to his name to be fair. But this position is undoubtedly the hardest to evaluate in hockey. It is so environmentally dependent. The Oilers have given Steuart Skitter a pretty favorable environment in the aggregate over the course of his time as their starter. The Oilers need more to be more consistent. They can get by with what they presently have, but if they genuinely want to project Stanley Cup contender status and for an extended period of time, this starter needs to be better. And maybe Skinner, by virtue of the last dance nature of this season, kicks it into gear and takes a step. But more likely than not, he’ll be between 905 and 910. He’ll be somewhere 2.6 2.7 goals against hopefully seven or eight goals saved above expected. And none of that is flashy. None of that is incredible. But with the team that should be in front of him, it should be enough to get them to the playoffs and it should be enough to keep them in most playoff series. Of course, the playoffs are an entirely different beast as Connor Halabuk himself can attest to. But we are going to take our first break of today’s edition of Locked on Oilers. And when we come back, speaking of playoff success, we’ll talk about Calvin Pickard, the narrative, and dive into his numbers and why this more likely than not is Calvin Pickard’s last stop in the NHL. Right after this, most people can’t name all their financial accounts or even what they’re worth, whether it’s 401ks, properties, or investments. And when you don’t have the full picture, you can end up leaving money on the table. That’s where our friends at Monarch Money come in. It’s an all-in-one personal finance tool that brings your entire financial life together in one clean, easy to use interface on your laptop or phone. Monarch is built for people with busy lives. If you’ve put off organizing your finances or you’re anxious about the reality, Monarch is here for you. Monarch does all of the heavy lifting. You can link all of your accounts in minutes, see clear data visualizations, get smart categorization of your spending, and finally feel in control of your money. And Monarch Money promises you will never touch a spreadsheet. Monarch made me aware I wasn’t saving as much as I needed to. Whether it was for big purchases so I didn’t have to finance them like these headphones or a trip, Monarch has gave me actionable plans to make them happen. So do not let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code locked on NNHL at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That’s 50% off your first year at monarchmoney.com with code locked on NHL. Thank you to everyone who is hanging out on this midweek Wednesday edition of lockdown Oilers as we are getting ever so close to the start of preseason games and the eventual season. And we’re about 3 and 1/2 weeks away from the start of the actual season, October 7th or 8th, whatever it is, that second full week of October. And as part of the ramp up, we’re continuing our positional group conversations through this week. Monday, we talked about the forwards. Yesterday, the defense, today, the goalies. Tomorrow, we’ll hit the power play. Friday, we’ll hit the penalty kill. And I like doing these discussions and these dives because it makes me put context around these numbers. It’s not just looking at the numbers. It’s more what the numbers say. And when it comes to Calvin Pickard, I say this with respect. This guy got lucky. I I it is unbelievable that Calvin Pickard has played as much as he has over the last two seasons because to be fair, he was out of the NHL for a really long time. And like I’m going to click over to his stats here real quick because I want to get the number right. For his average NHL season, Calvin Pickard starts 15 NHL games. He started almost 30 last year. Do you understand how much of a significant jump that is? Calvin Pickard got into 36 games last year. He started 31. Calvin Pickard’s career average starts in a season prior to last year was 14. We are talking about 20 more games than average. That is a massive jump in responsibility and workload. And it’s not a coincidence. The last time Calvin Pickard started more than 30 games in a season was 2017 2018 for the Colorado Avalanche when they were one of the worst teams in the entire NHL. Calvin Pickard is a journeyman goalie. And I can, as somebody who loves hockey deeply, we can romanticize the Journeyman backup. Somebody who’s been in half the organizations in the NHL, who’s bounced to Europe, who’s been in the AHL, who’s been a Bellcow starter, you know, 30, 45, 50 starts in the AHL in your late 20s, early 30s. A lot of guys give up. And Calvin Picker deserves credit for that. Sticking with it into your late 20s and into your 30s as an AHL goalie. There are a lot of guys who don’t have that mental toughness, who don’t have that resolve to gut it out in the national at that point. There are a lot of guys who get past that first or second contract and they still haven’t really stuck at the NHL level or in Pickard’s case, somebody who was in the NHL for a couple years. A lot of guys don’t have that mentality of, okay, I will work my way back here. I will find a way to get back here. A lot of guys, if they have three or four years at the NHL level and are then sent to the AHL or can only get offered an AHL contract, they don’t have the patience. They don’t have the resolve. They don’t have the determination. Let me tell you, life in the A as an old head is not the most glamorous thing in the world. You are riding buses. you are not getting paid nearly what your NHL salary would be and you are grinding it out for chance. And when you’re a goalie, it’s a little different because if you have to get slipped through waiverss from the end to the NHL to the AHL, you can you can delude yourself to some degree that hey, someone might claim me. Teams always need a goalie. There’s always going to be injuries because teams can only afford to carry two in reality against the salary cap. Should a goalie get injured, teams immediately are tapped in on that waiver wire and goalies have to go through because this situation arises where you have guys who are underperforming who need to play at the AHL level who do not have the privilege of being waver anymore and have to clear and they will get claimed. and Pickard is a really nice story and I feel that he has given them what he can and my big barometer something in life this is not just sports and I get this from Friday Night Lights the movie where coach Gaines is talking to the team and did you do everything you could to look your friends your family the people you care But if you can tell them you gave it your best and you still lost, that’s okay. And it is important to understand that. And it’s something that I think a lot of people struggle with to some degree. The fear of failure and the idea that no, I have to be successful. I have to be successful. To eventually be successful, you do need to fail first. And Tom Brady talks about this a lot that the reason he likes football so much that he thinks everybody should play football is because football is hard. Because football will challenge you. Football will challenge you to get better. And a lot of people don’t have that in them. But the greats, they find a way to get there, to answer that, to come back, to bounce back. And in the case of Pickard, there’s a non-zero chance this is the last NHL hockey he ever plays. He is not egregiously old for a goalie. guys can play into their late 30s, even their early 40s at this position just by the nature of it. But with his sample size, with his workload, with where the Oilers Oilers are at organizationally, it wouldn’t shock me that after if after this year Pickard retired or if Pickard went to Europe or Pickard signed an AHL contract after this. I’m not convinced Calvin Pickard is one of the 64 best goalies in the world. I think he has been fortunate to play on the Oilers the last two years who are good enough in front of him that he doesn’t need to do a whole lot other than not be egregiously bad. His career numbers are very very average. Talking about a 9003 save, a 2.89 goals against a negative goal save expected and he’s on average only facing 26 shots on goal per game. Something we’ve talked about quite a bit especially last year during the regular season. the difference in performance from the team in front of him versus the team in front of Skinner where Pickard’s facing two or three fewer shots on goal per game than Pickard was and excuse me than Skinner was. And it raises the quandry. I mean, the team always plays better in front of the backup goalie. That’s that’s human psychology at play. Not necessarily a conscious decision that, oh, Pix is in there, we got to play better. No, those guys have it in their hearts and they know, okay, Pix is in there, we got to bail him out. we got to look out for him because we know he doesn’t have as much as Skinner does. And look, that’s a very fickle scale. There is not a huge gap between these guys. But I do think teams know and they’re backup goalies and that they have more of a responsibility to play responsibly. And I think the picker they’ve gotten in the postseason each of the last two years is worthy of commenation as well. I think we also can’t be too romanticized by the narrative, which is something we have to walk the line of in sports. Especially, I think the talking heads, the national media people, they get too married to the narrative and it influences their perception of results and it leads to disingenuous commentary or I think it leads to people not caring about the results enough. You know, it’s awesome Picker has come in in the playoffs each of the last two years and played a pivotal role in getting them to the Stanley Cup final, but by and large, this is a environmental team where all the goalie needs to do is not stink. And that’s enough. We are going to take our second and final break on today’s edition of Lockdown Oilers. When we come back, I’m going to tell you why. Even though Ilia Samson Sonov and Carter Hart are out there, I don’t know if you really want either of those guys right after this. The NFL season is here and FanDuel is making sure you’re ready for kickoff with a can’tmiss offer because right now new FanDuel customers can bet just $5. And if your bet wins, you’ll get $300 in bonus bets to use on the FanDuel app. I love using FanDuel because it makes however I want to play easy. 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Thank you to everyone who is hanging out on this Wednesday edition of Lockdown Oilers as we are walking through the Oilers goalie room and I have not spent a lot of time talking about Carter Hart. Candidly, I have no interest in Carter Hart. Journalistically, I have a responsibility to the audience to tell you why. And I will be upfront. The morality of this situation is bad. The Oilers, Stan Bowman, Evander Kane, Corey Perry. There are a sliding scale of things here and it is important we talk about them in the context of actors in situations, what we know, what we don’t know, what standards are, ethical versus legal. And I’m going to be very frank with you, Carter Hart is a narrative goalie. Putting aside the very serious moral quandry about bringing in a player who has those allegations against him. And yes, I know the charges were ultimately not pursued in court. They were they were dismissed. I do not think they should be taken lightly. And that’s my opinion. I do not think those should those should be taken lightly. I can personally tell you it makes me uncomfortable. Now, you might be different. You might be thinking, “Well, if the Oilers are as desperate as you say they are, Nick, why aren’t you that interested?” Well, since you asked, thankfully, Carter’s stats kind of stink. 1616 and five, average of 38 starts, 9006 save, which is one point better than Skinner’s career average, but 2.94 goals against average. That number’s worse. Skinner’s goals against average is 2.772. Harts is 2.94. And yes, some of that is a byproduct of being on god-awful Flyers teams where the defense was non-existent. The forward group was untalented. I’m not ignorant of that. He has a negative goal saved above expected for his career average. That’s not particularly impressive. And I get it. Carter Hart had a lot of pedigree. He had a lot of hype as an amateur goalie. Somebody who thought would be the heir to Carrie Price for the net for team Canada. somebody who had the one really good postseason for the Flyers in the bubble when they got to the second round and ultimately lost to I think the Islanders if I remember correctly and then I don’t remember who Tampa Bay beat on the other side of the bracket. Maybe Boston, but that that’s neither here nor there. Carter Hart hasn’t played professional hockey in a year and a half, almost two full seasons. He is somebody that hasn’t had a good NHL season in a while. He is somebody who is going to draw extra attention, who is going to add to this environment. The numbers are not impressive. The stigma that comes with signing a guy like that, especially having Stan Bowman as the general manager, that is another thing that weighs on this. And you can say that’s not fair and that’s your opinion. You are perfectly entitled to say, Nick, that that’s not fair. The charges were dismissed. Okay, I do not want a guy like that on my team. The numbers are not particularly good. You are allowing yourself to get talked into the narrative. Remember what we had said before and the last segment that there are some insiders who allow or media people who allow themselves to be too romanticized by the narrative that they become ignorant of the results. Yes, Carter Hart at one point was a highly touted prospect. He has had flashes of good NHL performance. He has a real ethical stigma to him. He has not played in a number of years and his numbers are not particularly impressive. That’s three strikes against him. That is more than enough for me to say I’m good on that. I know there’s been reports he’s really not interested in signing with a Canadian team. He wants to try and stay out of the firestorm that would come with signing with a Canadian team because Canadian media takes hockey more seriously than down here in the States where he would almost assuredly be asked ridiculous questions by Paul Besonette about how it feels to be back in the NHL. But that’s neither here nor there. The other goalie that comes to mind in this conversation we’ve talked about quite a bit someone over the last few weeks is Ilia Samson Sonov and Alexander Gorgv signed with the Sabres last week. somebody who had a really rough go of it last year in Colorado, melted down, got traded to the Sharks, played even worse on the Sharks than he did on the ABS. That is the caliber of player that is available out there at this point. I think I Sam Sonov is a conduit type goalie. I think he’s very similar to what Steuart Skinner is in the respect that if everything’s going well around him, he’s going to be able to hold it together. Samsonov has a couple decent NHL seasons under his belt at a few different stops. And look, I’m not saying he’s a Vzna caliber goalie, but he’s got a 9/19 save percentage in there. He’s got a 913 in there. He’s got a 902. Those are respectable. 913 and 919 are nothing to sneeze at. You know, 22 starts, 913 save. 40 starts, 919 save on Toronto. And again, that’s on a Capitals team that was really good at his rookie season. And then on a Vegas team that was pretty excuse me on a Toronto team that was pretty good. So those numbers are environmental. They tell you that hey if everything around this guy is okay he’s a passable NHL goalie and I think and I have said this for a few weeks now it’s at least worth the conversation. And look we know what Stan Bowman thinks. The devil you know is better than the one you don’t. He thinks he would rather roll the dice with Skinner, that Chris Knobblock knows what buttons to push, that he’s going to be able to get good performances out of him, and the variance that would come with introducing a new goalie to this room. Well, can you clear picker through waiverss to get him back to the AHL to hold on to him if something bad happens? I don’t know. Can you? There are real questions to be had here about how they could go about this. And I’m a big believer in competition. I think anytime a team puts a player in a position where they have a fake competition, you know, like the Giants did a couple years ago with Tyrod Taylor and Daniel Jones, you want to give guys a real chance to play. The problem here is you can’t do that with Pickard and Skinner. Pickard can’t start 50 games. He can’t physically. Calvin Pickard cannot start 50 games at this point in his NHL career. I just do not think he would be able to do it. That means by default Steuart Skinner is going to get the majority of the starts. And what that means for your team, I think, as we have long said, I if I ever start selling locked on Oilers merch, the t-shirt will say be a guy, not the guy. And that’s what it is for Skinner. Don’t lose them the game. And most of the time that’s good enough. When you get to the playoffs and you play teams that are better than you or have an equal amount of talent, that’s not good enough. And that’s where teams start to separate against Edmonton. But that will do it for today’s edition of Locked on Oilers. If you could be so kind, please subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcast or over on YouTube. Be sure to check out Locked On NHL and Locked On NHL game night ahead of the start of the season to be ready. I will talk to you guys tomorrow where we will talk about the Oilers power play. Until then, let’s go Oilers.

The Edmonton Oilers face an organizational crossroad in net. After this season, both Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard are free agents. Neither Skinner or Pickard has inspired much confidence as a full-time NHL starter, but short of other options, the Oilers are running it back one last time. On this episode, host Nick Zararis lays out the narratives surrounding each goalie and why outside options like Carter Hart and Ilya Samsonov just aren’t realistic.

4:08 Stuart Skinner’s mediocre stats and expectations

8:42 Last chance for Skinner and Pickard

14:20 Calvin Pickard’s unlikely NHL journey continues

19:37 Analyzing potential external goalie options for Oilers

24:45 Ilya Samsonov as a possible alternative

DEBATE: How the Edmonton Oilers should manage Stuart Skinner | Why this is his last chance

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