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Where there’s smoke, there’s often fire. The Edmonton Oilers having interest in Tristan Jarry has been common knowledge for weeks, and they finally pulled the trigger on Friday morning. The Oilers acquired Jarry and Samuel Poulin in exchange for Stuart Skinner, Brett Kulak, and a second round pick in 2029.
Elliotte Friedman was the first to report the actual trade on Friday morning, but the Heavy Hockey Network’s Michael Hebert (@oilerslive) first posted that a trade involving Jarry and Skinner was close to happening on November 27. Negotiations were clearly ongoing.
Jarry has a 9-3-1 record with the Pittsburgh Penguins this season along with a .909 save percentage and a 2.66 goals against average. The 28-year old was the starting goaltender for the 2014 Memorial Cup winning Edmonton Oil Kings, so he’s familiar with Edmonton. He doesn’t have much in the way of NHL playoff experience though, just eight games between 2019 and 2022.
Poulin is a 24-year old left winger that was a 2019 first round pick of the Penguins. He has two assists in fifteen NHL games since 2022-23. The 6’2″, 213 lb winger is having a career-year with 20 points in 22 games for the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins of the AHL. Oilers GM Stan Bowman thinks that Poulin is at the age where he could emerge as a potential player for the Oilers in the not too distant future. He would certainly add some size to the bottom-six.
The story of the day involves the goaltenders though. The Skinner saga is finally over. To say that Skinner has taken some heat for his play over the last few years would be an understatement. He was nothing if not inconsistent. Sometimes he would be solid, and other times he left Oilers fans wondering what on Earth he was doing.
Skinner got into one game during the shortened 2020-21 season, an 8-5 win over the Ottawa Senators. He played thirteen games down the stretch in 2021-22 and put up a sparkling .913 SV% and 2.62 GAA. The Oilers clearly had an NHLer on their hands, but they didn’t know what his ceiling was, so they went out and signed Jack Campbell to a five-year, $25 million contract. Campbell struggled, and Skinner was thrust into the starter’s role as a rookie. He played 50 games for the Oilers in 2022-23, put up a .914 SV% and a 2.73 GAA, and was a finalist for the Calder Trophy.
Then he played 59 games and another 23 playoff games in the Oilers’ run to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final in 2023-24. His save percentage dipped to .905 in the regular season and to .901 in the playoffs, but he outduelled Jake Oettinger in the Western Conference Final and put up better numbers than Sergei Bobrovsky in the 2024 Stanley Cup Final despite being the losing goaltender.
I strongly believe that Skinner was overplayed in his first two seasons with the Oilers. Their mistake was signing Campbell, the big ticket free agent with some known injury issues, in the summer of 2022. I don’t think anyone would’ve predicted Campbell falling quite as hard as he did, but all they needed was a capable 1A to guide Skinner through his first two full NHL seasons. Instead, he played 144 hockey games in two years when he likely wasn’t ready for that kind of workload because they swung for the fences with Campbell and they struck out.
The results of overplaying Skinner started to reveal themselves last season. His SV% fell to .896 and his GAA rose to 2.81. Then, he got shelled for eleven goals against in the first two games of the first round against the Los Angeles Kings last season. Calvin Pickard took the net and won the next six games before getting hurt and forcing Skinner back into the net for Game 3 of the second round series against the Vegas Golden Knights. Skinner allowed the game-winning goal with a fraction of a second left (although it was a flukey own-goal off the stick of Leon Draisaitl). Skinner proceeded to rattle off two straight shutouts to get the Oilers back to the Western Conference Final, where he once again outduelled Oettinger en route to a Stanley Cup Final berth. Skinner, like many of his teammates, wasn’t at his best in what turned out to be a second consecutive Stanley Cup Final defeat.
Many Oilers fans felt strongly that the team couldn’t win with Skinner as the number one goaltender, and they were vocal about it throughout his Oilers tenure. That chorus grew louder this past summer. No changes were made in net except for bringing in a new goalie coach, Peter Aubry. The Oilers got off to a slow start, both Skinner and Pickard struggled out of the gate, and the heat on Skinner and Pickard intensified.
The Oilers played sixteen of their first 24 games on the road, and the Eastern portion of their travel schedule will conclude next Thursday. The Oilers have provided one of the worst goaltending environments in the league due to poor team play this season. That played a factor in the team’s slow start, and that didn’t help the Oilers goaltenders who were adjusting to a new goalie coach.
Losing a few road games is one thing, but getting crushed in two out of three home games (with a seven-game trip sandwiched between them) likely made Oilers GM Stan Bowman feel he had to make a change. The 9-1 shelling at the hands of the Colorado Avalance and the 8-3 debacle against the Dallas Stars were likely the last straws.
According to Moneypuck, Skinner has the seventh highest expected five-on-five goals against total among goalies that have played at least ten games this season (68.88). He has allowed 62 five-on-five goals, which means that he has saved 6.88 goals above expected this season (23rd among qualified goalies). Skinner has improved in that metric this season. He had only allowed eight total goals in his last five starts. That just goes to show that his play matched the level of the team in front of him, which sums up his Oilers tenure nicely.
The Penguins are in a wild card spot entering play on Friday, and they just traded a goalie with fantastic numbers for a goalie who is playing worse this season. It doesn’t make sense on the surface, especially considering that the Penguins have four goalies that they like in their system.
There’s no argument that Jarry has had a better season to date than Skinner has or that Jarry’s career raw numbers are better than Skinner’s; but Skinner’s raw numbers have been better than Jarry’s in every year of Skinner’s career except this season. Jarry was waived and sent to the AHL last season because he was so bad. The Penguins were awful in front of him last year, and Jarry struggled. Does that sound familiar, Oilers fans? Jarry has also dealt with a number of injuries over the past few years. Anyway, the Penguins clearly wanted to get out of Jarry’s contract.
He has recovered nicely and is having a stellar season so far, but this honestly feels like a lateral move for the Oilers, and they had to pay to make it. It’s kind of funny that the Oilers made a lateral move to get rid of a goaltender that struggled with lateral movement, but I digress.
The Penguins get out of Jarry’s contract and they get a goaltender with two Stanley Cup Finals under his belt for what could be a final run for Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, and Kris Letang. The Oilers get a guy they like with cost certainty for three playoff runs. The hope for both sides is that a change of scenery does both players good.
Skinner was a homegrown draft pick in the most literal sense of the term since he’s from Edmonton, so it’s sad to see him go. A lot of people didn’t like Skinner’s calm and self-reflective demeanor in interviews, but I enjoyed that aspect of his personality. I thought he was open and honest about himself and his play, which was refreshing. I wish him nothing but the best.
Kulak is another local product on the move as a part of this deal. The Stony Plain native played a key role for the Oilers for parts of five seasons. Kulak was acquired at the 2022 trade deadline. He always stepped up his play in the playoffs. Kulak was a big part of the last two Stanley Cup Final runs and of the 2022 Western Conference Final run. He’s a tremendous skater, which made him able to play both sides of the ice easily. His ideal fit on a championship level team is on the third pairing, but he has proven that he can hold his own on a second pairing like he did last season.
Kulak had a TOUGH November for the Oilers though. He was outscored 4-18 at five-on-five. His eighteen goals against were a team-high last month. The writing has been on the wall for Kulak ever since the Oilers extended Jake Walman and Mattias Ekholm this fall. Kulak wasn’t going to be a part of the team’s future beyond this season. It was a luxury to have a player of his quality on the third pairing, but his $2.75 million was needed to make what the team feels is an improvement elsewhere on the roster.
Jarry’s cap hit is $5.375 million for two more years after this one. Skinner’s $2.6 million and Kulak’s $2.75 million add up to $5.35 million, so the math is close. The second round pick involved in this trade is a 2029 pick. Most people won’t think much about that, but that’s a high pick that will come at a time where it will be important to prepare for life after Draisaitl and Connor McDavid. It’s not a nothing pick.
This is another move designed for immediate gratification at the cost of a future asset. That now-focused mindset is why they didn’t draft Jesper Wallstedt when they should’ve, it’s why they signed Campbell in 2022, and it’s why they just paid to fix a problem mid-season when the more prudent play was to wait until the summer when the cap is expected to jump. I don’t even know that this move will fix the goaltending issue.
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In a related move, the Oilers acquired Spencer Stastney from the Nashville Predators for a 2027 third round pick. The 2018 fifth round pick is playing in his first full NHL season this year. He has played in all 30 of the Predators’ games this season. He had never played more than 23 NHL games in a season before this year. The 25-year old has ten points this season, which doubles his previous NHL career-total before this season. This is the year that Stastney is establishing himself as a full-time NHLer.
He’s not big at 6’0” and 184 lbs, but Stastney is an offensively inclined defenceman. He’s the type of skilled player that Bowman seems to covet. Bowman talked about his mobility and his quickness after Friday’s trades. Perhaps the thinking is that he will help the Oilers break the puck out of their own zone more efficiently. Stastney has managed a 50% five-on-five goal share and a 55.30% five-on-five expected goals for percentage on a terrible Predators team this season. The 25-year old (soon to be 26-year old) will be a restricted free agent at the end of the season, and his cap hit is $825k for this season.
It seems like Stastney has some potential to be a part of the plan going forward, which makes me less upset about spending a second draft pick as part of the move made to address the goaltending.
When the Daily Hive’s Preston Hodgkinson asked Bowman if we can expect a move involving Pickard, Bowman said that “he will remain with the team”. The Oilers players reportedly fought for the team to keep Pickard because he’s super popular and well respected in the room. I’m not sure what Bowman was suppoesd to say other than what he said, he wouldn’t openly report that he is planning to trade one of his players. I wouldn’t completely rule out a Pickard trade, especially if he continues to struggle; but there’s clearly nothing imminent on that front.
Related: The Oilers are STRUGGLING at five-on-five
If nothing else, this move will send shockwaves through the Oilers dressing room and serve as a signal that they need to wake up. They have been playing better lately after getting a little bit of rest and some home cooking, but the reality is that their win over the Detroit Red Wings on Thursday night was their second regulation win against a team that currently holds a playoff spot, and it was only their fourth win against such a team this season. Goaltending has been a big part of the issue; but the team hasn’t been good either. Pickard, the man the players fought to keep, has been worse than the guy that just got sent packing. So, the players need to step up and find their peak form in short order.
I personally don’t think this is the move that will put the Oilers over the top this season. I think their odds of winning the Stanley Cup with Jarry are the same as they were with Skinner. A fresh start could mean different results for both Jarry and Skinner, but we have no guarantees of that happening for either player. Jarry would need to return to his form from his younger days and maintain his play from the start of this season to make this trade a win for the Oilers. That’s not a definite outcome.
Jarry will join the Oilers in Toronto on Saturday. I imagine that Stastney will join the club on Saturday as well. The Oilers also recalled Riley Stillman on Friday after recalling Max Jones on Thursday. Jake Walman was placed on LTIR on Thursday, and Jack Roslovic and Connor Clattenburg were placed on IR as well. Stillman and Jones will be available in case anything happens on this five-game Eastern road trip the Oilers are about to embark on.
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