Call it even. Or call it highway robbery. Both apply to Tuesday night’s Redemption Heist in New York City.

If Stuart Skinner’s season-opening brain cramp against Calgary lost Edmonton a game they should have won, his performance against the hopelessly-frustrated Rangers won them a game they absolutely should have lost.

Lost?

The Oilers should have been laughed right out of Madison Square Garden by the end of the second period.

But what could have been a total disaster ended up in a gritty 2-0 decision that will go down in the record books as a good team finding a way to win when it was far from its best.

In reality, Skinner’s 30-save shutout bailed them out of a tepid night at both ends of the ice and stole them two points.

The Oilers weren’t very good for most of the game, but they’ll worry about that in practice Wednesday. In the meantime they are 2-0-1 on the season and finally off to that good start they’ve been promising themselves for three years.

It helped, of course, that the Rangers are absolutely snake-bitten this season. They haven’t scored a single goal in three home games, but on this night it wasn’t for lack of chances.

Fresh off a 3-1 win over Vancouver in one of the best and most stifling defensive performances you’re ever going to see from this team, the Oilers were serving up scoring chances by the cart load in New York. It’s like there was a half-off sale on one-timers.

“(Skinner) was huge for us all night,” said defenceman Darnell Nurse. “There are going to be breakdowns, there are going to be moments where he has to make big saves, and he did that a handful of times for us tonight.”

Indeed. Skinner made four or five big saves in the first 20 minutes to keep it scoreless and, with the Oilers showing even fewer signs of life after the intermission, was under siege again in the second.

Adam Edstrom had a point-blank chance. Then there was a two-on-one. J.T. Miller had a point blank chance on the power play. Mika Zibanejad had a back-door one-timer. Matt Rempe fanned on a wide-open back-door pass. Sam Carrick hit the crossbar and Braden Schneider hit the post. And the Oilers had to kill back-to-back minor penalties.

The Oilers, in response, had three shots on net in the second period and were so perplexed offensively that Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were split up and playing on separate lines.

Being up 1-0 after 40 on Trent Frederic’s breakaway goal was nothing short of miraculous. Sealing the deal in Adam Henrique’s empty-netter left the poor Rangers wondering what they have to do to score a goal.

“There were definitely a lot of scoring chances against us, more than we would like to give up,” said head coach Kris Knoblauch. “But he played a really strong game. And they weren’t easy saves, a lot of east-west, lateral saves where he had to be quick and I thought he moved really well.

“You’re going to win different ways, whether your power play comes up big, or the penalty kill or defensive play. Tonight we won a game with goaltending.”

And, once again, Skinner flashes his resilience like it was Grant Fuhr’s glove hand. That gaffe against Calgary is only a few days ago, but a night like this puts it far away in the rear view mirror.

If anyone thought a start like that was going to rattle him, Skinner put that to rest, along with the Rangers, with the eighth shutout of his career.

Say what you will about the 26-year-old in his fourth full season, he’s never boring.

“No matter what, if I’m playing the way I want to play, then I’m going to feel good,” he said, adding the outside noise isn’t a concern. “You just want to carry that one despite wins and losses and despite external ideas, thoughts or whatever is going on out there.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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