EDMONTON — Somehow, today’s fan base has come to need a whipping boy.
A fallback guy who can be blamed for whatever goes wrong — and when you’re the last guy to see the puck whiz past as it enters the net, well, step right up, Stuart Skinner.
“We all face pressure,” observed veteran centre Adam Henrique, “but to be a No. 1 goalie in a market like this, there’s probably extra pressure — coming from all angles. To see him struggle, Picks (Calvin Pickard) goes in, plays great…
“The mental aspect of being a No. 1 goalie is probably above and beyond any other position, and he does a great job with that.”
Sometimes a player gets labelled because of a contract. Sometimes he’s just not playing well enough.
And sometimes, as it has been for Skinner here in Edmonton, his play, the analytics folks and the goaltending “experts” — isn’t every Canadian a goaltending expert — all team up to dig the grave.
It all flows along in separate rivers of online abuse and talk radio diatribe, and at its confluence, Skinner would spend two days being blamed for a game-winning goal in Game 3 that was going wide of his net until Leon Draisaitl deflected it in with 0.4 seconds left.
It’s got to make a guy crazy, wouldn’t it?
“What outside noise?” Skinner asked Monday, after making 23 saves in a 3-0 shutout, a flawless performance in his team’s most important game to date. “I have no idea, no clue what’s going on.”
Behind a defensive effort so sound it would likely beat any team in the league three games out of four — if only you could replicate this pedigree of positional play night after night — Skinner filled in any cracks that the Vegas Golden Knights could chisel out of the Oilers’ impeccable structure in a Game 4 win that vaulted them to a 3-1 series lead.
Vegas had 10 shots on goal halfway through the game and trailed 3-0. From there, Edmonton became even harder to generate chances against.
In a four-start post-season where Skinner has drawn the Oilers’ worst three performances — Games 1 and 2 vs. L.A., and Game 3 vs. Vegas — he finally got his team’s best in front of him.
And Skinner played like a guy who knew what to do with it.
“We just put on our work boots and our hard hats and went to work. The way that we’ve competed over a number of games is pretty incredible,” Skinner said. “When you see our guys rolling and playing with that desperation and that fight that we’ve got, we always give ourselves a chance to win.”
Skinner isn’t the kind of goalie who will consistently carry his team to wins they don’t deserve.
Occasionally, sure. But take a look at the save percentages around the NHL — it’s not 2012 anymore. Goalies don’t carry teams the way they once did.
Skinner hasn’t been as good over the course of the regular season as he was last year, but you can say that about so many elements of this Oilers team — from Connor McDavid, to Zach Hyman, to the special teams, to the top defensive pairing.
But as the playoffs have worn on, we’re seeing an Edmonton team that’s left the regular season behind and found its playoff legs. On Monday night, they gave Vegas nothing and left head coach Bruce Cassidy as complimentary as he was frustrated on a night where his team was second best in every quantifiable category.
“They got an early lead, and they’ve been here before,” Cassidy said. “You’ve got to manage the game if you do that, and they did a good job of it. We had some looks, but we were kind of one and done. Not a lot of second chances.”
Vegas had three power plays in Period 1 and couldn’t score. They didn’t know it at the time, but that would be their best window of opportunity for the rest of the night.
Edmonton was air-tight after that — no more penalties, just 12 shots allowed through 40 minutes, and total domination at both net fronts.
“No easy passages through the neutral zone,” added Cassidy. “Give ‘em credit — they played the right way to win the game. We’re going to have to do it the hard way. Won’t be anything easy.
“They’ve been there. They were right there last year.”
Evander Kane was a force of nature in Game 4, with a goal, an assist, six hits and a plus-3 rating.
“From every standpoint,” Henrique said of his left winger, Kane. “We talked about playing with energy right off the bat, and Kaner gets in there, mixes things up, and other guys are following suit, just shift after shift.
“You want play on that line. We ended up with a few more penalties in the first than them, but … we continued to push that line and play with that energy from start to finish tonight.”
Henrique scored twice, and Leon Draisaitl — coming off perhaps the worst playoff game of his career — drew the rare assignment of marking Jack Eichel and eliminated the Golden Knights’ best forward. Draisaitl had no points and was excellent.
Even Kasperi Kapanen, playing his first playoff game in relief of Viktor Arvidsson, was impactful, generating momentum with his speed and physical play.
A pivotal Game 4 had the possibility of putting Vegas in the driver’s seat in this series. Instead, the Oilers showed that when they roll out their best game, it’s not particularly close.
Now, they’ve got three chances to reproduce a game of that pedigree to move on to the Western Conference Final.
It’s fair to wonder if the Edmonton Oilers will need more than two of those opportunities.
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