Myth busting-Goalie Coach Edition

In case you’ve been living under a rock lately, you’ve probably noticed that both Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen are performing much better than they were at points earlier in the season, and this is a big reason for the Oilers run of success of late.

This success hasn’t been on an island, there are people to have helped them along. Certainly Jay Woodcroft has helped, but the head coach only works one on one with the players so much. During practices, the players typically work a lot more with the assistant coaches in drills after Woodcroft has done some team wide drills with them. After that, they would split off into their different areas and do some area specific practices – in other words, the forwards split off with one assistant coach, the defence splits off with another assistant coach, and the goaltenders split off with the goaltending coach.

I’ve already mentioned the fact that Stuart Skinner is on the cusp of being an NHL regular. Part of that is due to Schwartz working with him. Doesn’t seem to be ruining Skinner from what I can see….

Certainly the players and Woodcroft deserve a lot of the credit, but logically Schwartz should get some of that credit too. Why would he only get blamed when the goalies are struggling and no credit when the goalies are seeing success?

I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t make sense to me.