Callouts, Standouts, and Shoutouts: Oilers fall to the Golden Knights in Game 3 heartbreaker
May 11, 2025
May 12, 2025 by Ryan Lotsberg
While appearing on The Nielson Show on Edmonton Sports Talk on Monday morning, TSN insider Darren Dreger reported that Calvin Pickard will miss “at least a week” with the lower body injury that he sustained in Game 2 against the Vegas Golden Knights.
That means that Stuart Skinner will be between the pipes for the Edmonton Oilers for at least a week. Should it be necessary, Game 7 would be on Sunday, May 18. That is less than a week from now. That means it’s Skinner’s crease for the rest of the series.
Pickard has a 6-0 record in these playoffs. He entered Game 2 of the team’s first round series against the Los Angeles Kings, and he became the starter in Game 3. He has an .888 save percentage and a 2.88 goals against average in his seven playoff appearances this spring. Pickard wasn’t perfect, but he was getting the job done.
Skinner allowed eleven goals in his first two starts against the Kings in round one. He was pulled from the game during a commercial break as Kings fans chanted his name tauntingly. Skinner has a .817 sv% and an abhorrent 5.36 GAA in his three playoff appearances this year.
Some people will tell you that this development means that the series is over. Skinner’s recent performance hasn’t done much to inspire confidence. The regular season was obviously a bit better for Skinner than these playoffs have been so far, but his .896 sv% and his 2.81 GAA weren’t great either.
My observation about Skinner is that he’s streaky as can be. He has stretches where the puck looks like a beach ball, and he has stretches where the puck looks like a bebe. The game looks really easy for him when he’s on; but when it rains, it pours. Let’s see if the numbers back that up. I went through his regular season game log on Hockey Reference looking for starts where he posted a .900 sv% or better this season.
The Oilers struggled in October, as did Skinner. He was .900 or better in three of his seven starts that month. The tides started to shift a little bit in November. Skinner had a .900 or greater save percentage in five of his nine starts.
Skinner turned it on in December though. Seven of his nine starts that month were .900 or better. He rattled off six such starts in a row between November 23 and December 14, and he had eleven of thirteen starts with a .900 or greater save percentage between November 23, 2024 and January 7, 2025.
January was similar to November for Skinner with a .900 or higher sv% in five of nine games. It was a struggle from thereon out though. He had one such start out of six in February, and two out of nine in March. Skinner suffered a concussion against the Dallas Stars on March 26 when Mikko Rantanen ran into him. Skinner got two more starts at the end of the season and played well in both games, but one was against a weakened Winnipeg Jets lineup, and the other was against the San Jose Sharks.
So Skinner had one hot streak this season. The odds would suggest that another one isn’t imminent, but you just never know with these things. All it takes is one win to get some confidence, and things can flow from there.
Related: Callouts, Standouts, and Shoutouts: Oilers fall to the Golden Knights in Game 3 heartbreaker
Take Skinner’s 2024 playoffs for example. He had two good starts out of five in round one against the Kings last year. He struggled in Games 1 and 2 against the Vancouver Canucks, and then he got pulled after allowing four goals on fifteen shots in Game 3 of that series. He stopped fourteen of fifteen shots in Game 6, and fifteen of seventeen shots in Game 7 to help the Oilers advance to the Western Conference Final. That Game 7 performance was technically under .900, but he only allowed two goals and that was enough to win.
Skinner followed that up with a tremendous series against the Dallas Stars. He got touched up in Game 3, but that was the only game out of the six in the series where his save percentage was less than .909. He was unbelievable in Games 5 and 6. If it wasn’t for him, that series might have gone the distance and who knows what would have happened in a Game 7 in Dallas.
Games 1, 2, and 3 of the Stanley Cup Final did not go well for the Oilers. The team lost all three games, and Skinner’s save percentage was below .900 in all three starts. Then he rattled off four starts in a row where his worst save percentage was .905. It was .970 in Game 4 and .952 in Game 6. Skinner and the Oilers ultimately lost the series, but Skinner’s cumulative numbers in the series were better than Florida Panthers goalie Sergei Bobrovsky’s were.
Skinner’s streakiness was on display last spring. He went through stretches where he struggled, and he had stretches where he was dynamite. This regular season saw more struggle than success, but there’s a stretch of reliable play somewhere in Skinner.
We also have to remember that athletes are humans first. Skinner is no different. He and his wife welcomed their second child into the world on January 28, which is approximately when things started going wrong for Skinner this season. It’s not the child’s fault, but the reality of being a parent of two young children is emotionally and physically taxing. Skinner also suffered that concussion near the end of the regular season. Head injuries are no joke. I sincerely hope that there are no lingering issues related to that injury for Skinner, but that is something that could be in play here as well.
Skinner has also played a ton of hockey in the last three seasons. He was thrust into the starter’s role as a rookie after the bet Jack Campbell didn’t pay out, and the net has been his ever since. The long run last year and the compressed schedule this season didn’t help matters much.
I’m not trying to make excuses for Skinner. He needs to be better, and he knows it. These are all entirely plausible and likely explanations for why he has struggled, especially in the second half of the season. The good news is that he got some rest while Pickard was on his six game run. That rest didn’t immediately turn into success, but Skinner has a chance to get into a rhythm now. The Oilers don’t need him to be 2021 Andrei Vasilevskiy. They just need two quality starts out of the maximum possible five that he will get in this series. I think that’s a fair ask and a reasonable expectation.
There’s a chance that the sky is actually falling and Skinner won’t be able to hold down the fort; but there is plenty of evidence to suggest that he is capable of turning it on at any given moment. There’s no way to know which way this will go. All we can do is sit back and watch it unfold.
The other options are Olivier Rodrigue, who has one NHL start to his credit; and Collin Delia, who hasn’t played an NHL game since 2023. They have played in a combined total of zero NHL playoff games. I’ll take my chances on Skinner, thank you.
There was only one stretch where Skinner had more than three consecutive starts with save percentages below .900 this season. That was a five game stretch between February 7 and March 4. That included that regrettable Eastern road trip after the 4 Nations Faceoff where the team put up stinker after stinker after stinker. Well, the Oilers are playing FAR better than that right now, and Skinner is at three consecutive starts below .900. That tells me that we’re on the precipice of a quality start from Skinner. Hopefully that theory pans out because the Oilers need one STAT!
