This in from Tony Brar of Oilers TV: “Stuart Skinner starts vs. MIN. Will go head-to-head with Jesper Wallstedt.”
It’s Skinner’s biggest test of the 2025-26 season. His challenge — and there’s no doubt he’ll accept it — is to slay the dragon that haunts and torments so many fans of the Edmonton Oilers.
The hottest goalie in the NHL, Jesper Wallstedt is that dragon. In nine games, Wallstedt has seven wins and an NHL-best .938 save percentage. But that’s not the reason Wallstedt looms so large in Edmonton. Heck, he hasn’t even played a game yet against Edmonton. But as most hardcore Oilers fans will tell you, in the 2021 draft, Edmonton had a chance to draft Wallestedt, the top-ranked goalie prospect, but utterly and infamously blew that opportunity.
In the past few weeks, the sequence of pain that saw the Oilers fumble away Wallstedt has only been mentioned about seven trillion times by upset Edmonton fans on social media.
After 19 picks in that 2021 draft, no team had selected the young Swede. But instead of grabbing him, the Oilers traded the 20th pick in the draft to the Wild for the 22nd and 90th overall picks. They did so, in part, because they already had three promising goalie prospects in the system, Olivier Rodrigue, then 21, Ilya Konovalov, then 23, and Skinner, then 22, himself.
Skinner had already played his first game in Edmonton in the 2020-21 season. He was coming off a stellar 31 game campaign in Bakersfield where he had a .914 save percentage. Konovalov had just had a .923 save percentage for Yaroslavl of the KHL and had just been signed to play in Bakersfield.
The Oilers drafted forward Xavier Bourgault and d-man Luca Munzenberger, both yet to play an NHL game, and both no longer in the Oilers system.
Wallstedt, now 23, had three good years after the 2021 draft, then one down season last year (an .879 save percentage in 27 AHL games) but he’s killing it in the NHL this season.
In no small part his play saw The Athletic rank the Wild as having the second best goaltending in the NHL just now. Writer Jesse Granger noted, “The real revelation has been Wallstedt. He has all but erased any worries from a disappointing season in the AHL last year, looking the part of a future franchise goalie. He made some huge saves on Friday to end Colorado’s 10-game win streak, and crowned it with his fun shootout celebration.”
As for the Oilers, Granger had Edmonton’s goalies ranked 31 out of 32 teams. Granger noted, “Stuart Skinner’s 25-save shutout against Seattle on Saturday may quiet things for a bit, but the noise around the Oilers’ struggles in net still seems louder than ever. It’s easy to see why. The two-time defending Western Conference champs are currently outside a playoff position and rank last in team save percentage. When Skinner is on, he’s a strong starting goalie. He uses his size well to take away shooting options and plays with good structure when he’s reading plays well. He just hasn’t been at his best nearly as consistently as Edmonton needs.”
An excellent test then for Stu Skinner and the Edmonton Oilers tonight, given how hot Wallstedt and the Wild are.
We’ll see if the win in Seattle was the start of something or a mere illusion, not any kind of the proof that the Oilers are ready to commit to defensive hockey and that Skinner is ready to go on a solid run.
At the Cult of Hockey
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