DONE: Skinner Benched Edmonton Oilers SHAKE-UP Looms as Stuart Skinner’s Starting Role COLLAPSES

DONE: Skinner Benched Edmonton Oilers SHAKE-UP Looms as Stuart Skinner’s Starting Role COLLAPSES

Stuart Skinner is done as the starting goalie of the Edmonton Oilers. It might not be today. It might not be tomorrow, but Edmonton can’t keep doing this. 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 Sorus. This is my 10th season doing digital hockey content, my third as a host here on the Lockdown Podcast Network. So I know what it feels like when your favorite team gets their butt kicked. And tonight the Oilers got their butt kicked. Lockdown Oilers is a part of the Lockdown Podcast Network, now the number one sports podcast network. And today’s show is brought to you by our friends over at FanDuel. Visit fanuel.com. Download the FanDuel app for your chance at $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. So, my friends, we are here once again after a disappointing performance, after a flat out unacceptable performance on a variety of levels. And we will get to the goalending. Don’t get me wrong. We are going to start today’s show talking about the goalending in the macro, the big picture and why this game is the straw that broke the camel’s back. In our second segment, we will pivot to be to talking about mentality and approach and why the Oilers continue to find themselves getting boat raced in these games. And then in our final segment, we’ll talk about a tipping point because there’s games left. Don’t get me wrong, we’re still going to play hockey in the rest of November, December, January, February, March, and then half of April, but time is of the essence, friends, and let’s get on into it. When you make decisions as a stakeholder, someone with authority, someone with control of a situation, you need a certain baseline level of credibility to ensure your power. And it’s a little bit different in sports versus public office when mayors, governors, senators, congress people, pres presidents, parliamentarians, whatever system of government you happen to live through. It is different. Those people need the consent of the government. In sports, it’s a little bit different. The fans just stop showing up. That’s the worst place to be. The the enemy of love is indifference. That’s the reality here. If people stop showing up, that means they’re done with what you’re putting out there. They don’t think it’s worth their time. It’s worth their money. And the Oilers are still drawing very well. Oiler fans are loyal to a fault and will continue to show up as the team struggles, but you need a certain baseline level of credibility to ensure your power. And that’s where this conversation really begins. I don’t even think this is particularly Skinner’s fault as far as his role in the organization’s utilization of him. He dramatically overachieved as a rookie. Ken Holland thought he found gold. He won all those games, made the All-Star team, and since then he has rewarded the Oilers with the most volatile goalending performance imaginable. And the Oilers are the significant other that only looks for the good in the situation. They’re the significant other that only sees the good parts of their partner. They’re not thinking about, well, he doesn’t have a great job. His health insurance, his deductible is really high. American joke. Sorry. He drinks too much. He doesn’t spend enough time with me. The house is kind of a mess. He’s got too much junk laying around. He doesn’t act like an adult. And all the Oilers see when they look at Steuart Skinner is, “We have so much fun when we go out. We listen to the same music. We like the same teams. We love the same movies and TV shows.” And that’s all the Oilers are doing. They are romanticizing a deeply flawed player who is out of his depth. And I always, and I do get flack for this a lot in my work, I always am going to be more empathetic towards the player because I can relate more. I can identify more. We all have our struggles. We all have certain aspects of our life that we wish we could do better at. And I’m not going on some grand pontification here. There’s no greater reflection on life in today’s show. There might be if they keep losing like this, but the Oilers put Skinner in a really rough spot and he has continued to fail over and over and over again. And you reach a certain point in your credibility where you have to do something or the entire operation falls apart. And this game against the Stars on Tuesday, November 25th is the point of no return. We have heard rumblings, murmurss, whispers, conversation that Stan Bowman and the Oilers decision makers are going to take the next month or so to decide what they need. And we talked about that a bit on yesterday’s show that generally teams start to put together their deadline shopping list in December. The Oilers are in dire straits. Under the hood, their numbers are poultry. Their goalending numbers are an atrocity. If you need another month to determine what isn’t working about this hockey team, I question if you are watching the games. And there is loyalty here. If you want to believe that Frank Saravelli report, I am always a bit skeptical of Frank. He has definitely eskeewed some of his credibility the last few years reporting things that ultimately turned out to not be true. Now whether he got bad sourcing or he made it up, that’s a different conversation. But if you continually get reports wrong and your sources are wrong, your credibility as a reporter is dissipated. So I would air a bit of skepticism in that. But Frank Cervelli reported the Oilers were going to replace Calvin Pickard as the backup. And whether that’s calling up Connor Ingram, though I don’t think that would be the case, or facilitating a trade or something entirely off the radar, the conjecture from Frank is the guys on the team said, “No, we want Picker as the backup.” And that’s a little too rudy for me. I I don’t think the guys are throwing their credibility or their season down on the line for the backup goalie with the 850 save percentage, which I’m sure went down after the game tonight cuz he gave up quite a few goals in relief of Skinner. But make no mistake about it, the Oilers have no credibility as a hockey team as long as they continue to send Skinner and Picker out there. And this sucks that there’s no other way to say it. You want to see the guys on your team succeed. I Stuart Skinner, the guy is a really good story. A inhouse developmental piece from the area. Good local kid makes good. Incredible rookie season out of nowhere. Saves their bacon. Does a great job in two conference finals. Out plays Jakeer who very well could be one of the three goalies America sends to the Olympics in February. And we are at a point now where the rest of the team is not good enough to wait for Skinner to figure it out. And we talked about that a ton this summer on lockdown Oilers if you were there in the dog days of July and August. You have a certain responsibility to the guys on this team. You have a certain expectation of where you’re at. And it’s reasonable to say the Oilers need more from certain guys, from Ekholm, from Bouch, McDavid, from Dry Cidle, from Pod Coulson, and from everybody. But we have to be realistic in our expectations here. Steuart Skinner has never been an above average NHL goalie. And I understand the Oilers aren’t asking him to be above average. They’re asking him to be slightly below average, but the way the team around him is playing, even if the Oilers got above average goalending, I don’t think it would matter a whole lot. And while I don’t think Skinner has any credibility going forward as a starter, I also think the way the team in front of him is playing is not being discussed enough, and it can be both. I do think it’s important to note that we can walk and chew gum at the same time here on Lockdown Oilers. And speaking of the way those two interact, we’re going to take our first break on today’s show. When we come back, I’m going to tell you why even though the goalending is what sank them, their performance in front of Steuart Skinner is why they were sinking. Let’s be honest, most of us can’t even name all our financial accounts, let alone what they’re worth. between 401ks, savings, and investments, it’s really easy to lose track, and that can leave meaning money on the table. That’s why I started using Monarch, 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’s help me organize my accounts, track my spending, get and get a better handle on my investments, and most importantly, I have never opened a spreadsheet. I love that I can review everything, set goals, and make better financial decisions. Monarch’s visual dashboards and smart tools make it so easy to understand where my money is going and how I can make it work harder for me. Do not let financial opportunity slip through the cracks. Use code locked on NHL and monarch.com for 50% off your first year. That’s monarch.com code locked on NHL for half off your first year’s subscription. Thank you to everyone who is making Lockdown Oilers their first listen of the day. Lockdown Oilers a part of the Lockdown podcast network, now the number one sports podcast network. Real quick, want to shout out Connor Clattenberg picking up his first career NHL goal. I want to apologize for calling him Mark Clattenberg. That is a referee in the English Premier League who I hand up. Just the names got them mixed up. It’s like Ryan Leonard and Riley Leonard, the Washington Capitals forward and the former Wisconsin now Colts quarterback. Sometimes you just get names in your brain. Wires crossed. Want to apologize. Picking up your first tally in the show. Great moment. One of the few bright spots in this game. Kid had juice. Kid wanted to get a fight going Faxa. Faxo said no. But credit where it’s due. That’s a kid who understood the moment and most importantly isn’t being tainted by the malaise creeping over this team and some of that I do think stems from the top down. I think the fact that there hasn’t been a reactionary move. The fact that Chris Knoblock is so even keel, so nonchalant, he’s never fired up. I do think that reflects this team. I think I don’t even think I know the attitudes and mentalities of leadership trickle down to the people under them. And that’s why we talk about leadership and culture to death in the sports space. There is no salary cap on coaching. There is no salary cap on leadership. Those traits are essential to any successful team. And I have been extremely complimentary of Chris Knoblock through his two years now as coach of the Edmonton Oilers, but this current run of form, and I know they were 33 and one on the road trip. I know their record isn’t god awful, but you got to call a spade a spade. That team got on the ice tonight and was as flat as any game I have seen this group play in a long time. I wrote down in my notes, where is it? Hang on. Hang on. I got to scroll back here. I got to scroll back. I got to scroll back. Sorry. Sorry. This is terrible radio, but handwritten notes have an upside. Okay. Longer passes. Mapani misses breakaway. One and done stack. Oilers chasing game harshly. Down one- nothing. Jamie Ben hits a post. Oilers penalty. Big Rubyound. Rohin’s goal. Two nothing. That quick. Mapani misses. Stars come back one- nothing. Then the Stars get a good shift down in the offensive zone. They wear Edmonton down. Edmonton is chasing the puck like chickens with their head cut off. Nobody is where they need to be. Nobody is making a play to actually win the puck. They are reacting, not preventing. And defense in the NHL is about pressure. You need to make the person holding the puck make a decision. Do I need to move my feet or do I need to move the puck? And tonight, the Oilers were chasing. You know what it looked like in the offensive zone for the Stars? It looked like an older brother running away from their little brother, like a 14-year-old running away from an eight-year-old. Or that 14-year-old, they’ve hit puberty, they’ve got the longer legs, they can run faster. And the 8-year-old’s trying, they’re chasing, they’re chasing, and they’re not getting there. And that’s how you fall behind the way they did. And the Stars are missing Miko Renin. The Stars are missing Neils Lungquist. I know Lungquist is hurt a lot, but that’s a decent NHL player. The Stars got off the bus with a rocket up their butt and said, “This team has nothing. Let’s bury them.” That is a reflection on mentality. And I have spent six weeks now talking about the fact the Oilers do not have the individual talent to play the way they’ve been. the long stretch passes, the defenseman on islands, the forwards trying to carry pucks through traffic, the dumpins to no one, the blind passes to no one, the pucks to no one. The Oilers went 15 minutes in this game to start the game. Two shots on goal. It took the Oilers more than 15 minutes to get two shots on goal. This is a team that features two of the five best players in the world, an all-world offensive defenseman, and a litany of other really solid NHL players. And you would have thought they never played organized hockey together before. The Oilers were disjointed, clunky, and Dallas eviscerated them. This game was not close. I know the final score was disgusting. I know the Stars hung a touchdown and a two-point conversion on the Oilers. It could have been 10. It could have been 14. That’s how bad the Oilers were, especially at the start of this game. And we spent the first period dumping on Pickard and Skinner. But four goals on eight shots, that’s not an NHL caliber goalie. It just isn’t. And you can say whatever you want. It is all interconnected. The defense let Skinner down. Skinner let everyone down. And that starts to drag and drag. And the shoulders start to sulk. The facial expressions start to develop despondency. This team looked dead after 20 minutes. And this isn’t like last year, year before, year before, year before. Down to this team is hopeless. The Oilers are not capable of scoring three straight goals without conceding one. They simply do not have the capacity to mount multi-goal comebacks anymore. They are not that good. They’re just not. They cannot generate dangerous enough offense. They are a team that has no staples, no bread and butter, no fallbacks to get to. And that’s why the conversation around the systems and the identity has begun to percolate. I saw Jack Han used to work with the Maple Leafs. does a lot of independent stuff now, consulting, coaching, writing a thread about how the Oilers never seem to have five players in the frame in either zone. And I think that’s a spacing issue. I think to Jack’s point, I think when your defenseman are so far out of the play in the offensive zone, they’re not real outlets. When you have guys not following up on loose pucks, you have guys phoning in checks, it it creates a really lack of dasical effort. And I was pissed. I I try not to get emotional when it comes to games like this because it’s not going to produce anything other than maybe some funny screen grabs for the people watching on YouTube. But the Oilers are better than this. They’re not better than the Stars, but they shouldn’t be losing games where they look like they’ve never played organized hockey together before. And the Oilers right now do not have anything going for them. They don’t have their stars bailing them out. The depth isn’t good enough to make up for the fact the Stars aren’t bailing them out. The goalending is abysmal. And those are all compounding into each other simultaneously. You could point at the coach, you can point at the goalending, you can point at the defenseman, the forwards. Everybody is culpable in this mess right now. And as we’ve talked about a lot, it’s a lot easier to just change one guy than it is to change the whole team. Especially when you consider the fact a lot of the guys the Oilers have are no trade guys or people who don’t have a lot of value in a trade to begin with. So you don’t have a lot of recourse for fixing this problem. On that note, we are going to take our second and final break on today’s show and we are going to talk about a segment that I have I have titled feal matter sandwich because we can’t swear. And I’m going to tell you exactly what that means right after this. The NBA is back and there is no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you missed the start of the game or if you want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next to huge fourth quarter comebacks. Plus, you can combine your live bets into a same game parlay for a shot at a bigger payout. We’ve got some lines posted for tomorrow. We got the Knicks and the Hornets. Got OKC in Minnesota, Western Conference Finals match up from a couple years ago. Memphis in New Orleans, a real good poop festa. And then Golden State Houston used to mean something to me. Those Chris Paul, Westbrook, Harden teams against the immovable object. That was the Steph Warriors. But FanDuel wants to help you make every game more exciting, especially when your team’s making that leap. Push. And right now, FanDuel is giving new customers $300 in bonus bets when your first $5 belt wins. Head on over to fanuel.com to sign up and play your game with FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Thank you to everyone that is making Lockdown Oilers their first listen of the day. And look, the only way is through. There is really no other way to say it. When you are up against it, when you are in the suck, when you are down in that hole, you can either lie there and feel sorry for yourself or you get up and you make something happen. And that’s an edict for everybody. It’s not just the guys on the ice. It’s not just the coaches, the front office. Everybody. Are you okay with what just happened? You’re not. But this is a nonchalant team. This is a we we’ll be okay team. You saw this down the stretch of the regular season last year where I kept coming on the show episode after episode and saying if they play like this for the next week, next month, when they get to the playoffs, they’re going to have no rhythm. They’re going to have no flow. And I wrote something along the lines of oil is easily demoralized. When a situation is tenuous, it’s really easy to fall apart. I’m going to give you an example. As you get older, post college, late 20s, 30s, you start to realize how difficult it is to make plans. And they start to have preconditions and they start to have expectations. And the most textbook example of course everyone is familiar with. You get invited to an occasion and your first instinct is to ask, well, is this person going? And if they’re not going, your your willingness to go massively drops off. And that’s kind of the circumstance we’re dealing with here. The Oilers are that fragile house party, that fragile get together that is tricky to put together now. And guys have gotten older. There are new faces popping up. There are significant others. And when those plans are tenuous, it requires a lot of nurturing. It requires a lot of effort to corral everybody to get where they need to go. And it’s really easy for everybody to go back to being themselves. and everybody’s out in their own little circles and it’s all downstream of each other which is a complicated concept that doesn’t lend itself too well to sports. In the world of sports, the way media works, you read a column, you listen to a podcast, you watch an Instagram reel, a Tik Tok video, a YouTube short, a fulllength pod v YouTube video essay, you read tweets. We want what happened, who did it, and we want as crisp and direct language as possible. Who do I blame for the reason I am unhappy? It is really easy to just say the goalie, the coach, player X, player Y. Everybody is culpable in this problem. Hockey is a weak link sport. The worst player is going to stand out against the other team’s best. And when you have that weak link, your goal is to minimize it as much as possible. It’s really hard to minimize a weak link. That’s a goalie. A goalie has such an influence on the outcome of a game. A goalie who doesn’t even get tested a whole lot struggles. Let’s say just little little envelope math here for you. The Oilers conceded eight shots on goal against Stu gave up four goals. 900 save percentage. So let’s say 90 * 8 *.9.9. So that would still be a goal against don’t get me wrong, but that would only be one. That’d be a 8 * 9.72. You would get 7.2 out of eight. Now you round down 7 out of eight. That’s still one goal against, but down one nothing after one period. that would work down one- nothing. You still have a little energy. You still have a m little momentum. And there will be people who point out the echole mistakes and the Bard mistakes. And that’s valid. The bro the plays breaking down are why the goal ultimately happens. But sometimes your goalie needs to help. And it’s funny in the hockey world, if your goalie is too good, your teams gets labeled as not being good. They’re goalie merchants. They’re too reliant on Hella or Shisturkin or Siroken. And if they’re too bad, well, you can’t ask him to do that. He’s terrible. The team in front of him needs to play. But it’s a real irony. And I wish I had a better answer for you as to how we talk about this more constructively, but environment produces the conditions and how the players interact with those conditions is largely a product of their individual talent. How their talents intersect and the game itself unplays. That’s why we play the games and that’s why it’s compelling. But when you watch the Oilers, I mean, what are they doing well? If you are a fan of this team and you are watching this slop night after night, what would you say the Oilers do? Well, they dump the puck in great. They don’t ever go get it. They’re good for one dangerous offensive zone rush that doesn’t result in a goal. They generate a ton of point shots, don’t get me wrong. They generate maybe the most point shots of any team in the entire NHL, but they are not producing any type of discernable offense. Their defense because it has an increased magnification on it is wilting in these close situations. And then because the goalies aren’t good, it all flows in both directions. Not only are they not scoring enough, so the defense has more responsibility, so the goalending needs to be perfect. The goalending is bad, which means the defense needs to be better, which means the offense needs to be better, which means everything is bad. And you know, not to be limp biscuit, but everything sucks. Yeah, kind of. Everything sucks about this team right now. The vibes are god awful. At two nothing, 5 minutes in, I knew this game was over. There was not a chance the Oilers were coming back to win this game. and you still have to sit there for another 50ish minutes and two periods and poor Jack Michaels lost his voice on the Connor Kleberg goal. It’s it’s really one of those nights where everything that could go wrong did go wrong and at the same time I kind of feel lucky the Stars didn’t score 10 or 15. The Oilers have a lot of soularching to do. They have a lot of digging to do. Stan Bowman needs to get work in that phone and we’ll talk about it more on tomorrow’s show ahead of Thanksgiving. The goalie market is bad. There are no great goalies out there. And you have no idea how any of them are going to fit if you bring one in. And everyone knows you need to bring one in. So, they’re going to drive an even harder bargain. But that will do it for today’s edition of Locked Oners. Thank you so much to everyone that made Locked on Oilers their first listen of the day. Locked on Oilers, part of the Locked On podcast network, now the number one sports podcast network. Be sure to check out locked on NHL game night where the guys are breaking down every game every night until a Stanley Cup champion is crowned in June. You can find it wherever you get your podcast or over on YouTube. I will talk to you guys tomorrow on American Thanksgiving. See you guys then. Until then, let’s go Boilers.

Edmonton Oilers’ playoff hopes face a crisis as Stuart Skinner’s volatile goaltending hits a breaking point. Can Stan Bowman salvage the season with a bold trade, or will the defensive woes and team mentality doom Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl’s quest for the Cup?

Nick Zararis tackles Edmonton’s collapse against the Dallas Stars, examining the team’s lack of credibility, leadership under Kris Knoblauch, and stagnant offensive systems. Hot topics include Evan Bouchard and Mattias Ekholm’s struggles, the search for goaltending answers, and the psychological impact on a roster built for success but mired in mediocrity. Is time running out for the Oilers to restore confidence and ignite a winning streak—or will another season slip through their fingers?

06:19 Oilers’ Credibility Strugglesกับ Goalie

08:57 Goaltending, Finances, and Accountability

13:43 Oilers’ Struggles: Reactive Defense

17:09 Oilers’ Spacing and Effort Problem

22:11 “Fragile Oilers Party Dynamics”

26:02 “Oilers’ Struggles with Offense”

28:26 “Locked On Oilers Podcast”

DONE: Skinner Benched Edmonton Oilers SHAKE-UP Looms as Stuart Skinner’s Starting Role COLLAPSES
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