Do The Edmonton Oilers Have a Goaltending Controversy

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There’s no question that the goaltending situation for the Oilers has unfolded in the complete opposite direction that it was expected to.

Although Jack Campbell has been playing better as of late, there’s no question he’s been struggling to start the season. The only feather he has in his cap is that he still has a winning record of 8-6-0-1 in his 15 starts so far, but his GAA is above 4.0 and his sv% is below .900.

Those aren’t the numbers you’d want from a $5 million man.

Meanwhile, rookie Stuart Skinner, in his first season as a full-time NHLer, has performed better than anyone expected. His sv% of .916 is nearly elite, which is phenomenal for a rookie goaltender. His 2.81 GAA isn’t spectacular but he’s shown the ability to steal us games at times and keep the team in games they didn’t deserve to be in, the mark of a great goaltender.

He isn’t at the top of the list, but he’s at least put himself in the conversation for the Calder trophy. I wouldn’t count on him to win the Vezina trophy either, as he’s currently middle of the road in all the important goalie stats for the NHL.

That being said, whether he wins a trophy or not doesn’t have any bearing on whether or not he’s had a solid season. Unless he completely implodes between now and the end of the season, he’ll have had a solid season regardless. If he goes on a Jordan Binnington-style heater circa 2019, then who knows? The sky’s the limit at that point.

One thing he has done, however, at least for the moment, is supplanting Campbell as the starter. Skinner has already played seven more games and has six more starts than Campbell does.

This will create an awkward situation in the offseason for Ken Holland if this continues. Does he keep Campbell for next season at least and hope he rebounds? Or does he move him and change the makeup of his tandem between the pipes, hoping another outside hire will do the trick? I already considered one possibility for the latter here, and of course, Holland may have a whole other plan as far as this goes. After all, if Campbell continues to struggle it will only drive down his trade value even more.

It’s a loaded question for sure. Making the playoffs for the Oilers in win-now mode is not an option, it has to be done. In today’s NHL you need two dependable tenders who are at least average. Some teams have been able to make do with the traditional starter-backup tandem, but that’s only a handful of teams these days.

It’ll be something to keep an eye on as Jack Campbell is signed for another four seasons after this one. That’s a long time to be struggling in an Oilers uniform

Mandatory Credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports /

We all know Connor Mcdavid is good, the best in the game as most would say. But we get to see him play every game as Oilers fans and it’s easy to take him for granted because of that.

Sometimes it’s fun to just step back and take a look at just how good he is.

Right now he’s producing 1.86 PPG. That projects out to 153 points for him if he stays healthy this season for all 82 games. That’s absolutely phenomenal.

It’s also worth noting that he has 31 goals already. By December 3 he had already cracked the 20-goal mark. Think about that for a minute – we were barely a quarter of the way through the season and Mcdavid had already scored more than a lot of NHL players do all season. That is absolutely fantastic. Personally, I can’t wait to see how he’ll do the rest of the season. With a win against Seattle tonight the Oilers could move into third in the division – and with the Flames and Kraken both coming back down the earth as of late the Oilers just might be able to stay there if they play their cards right. He’s even outscoring last season’s MVP Auston Matthews, who only has 17 goals right now – that’s almost a ratio of 2:1.

The scary thing – for the rest of the league anyway – is Mcdavid just started his prime producing years last season so there’ll be many years of him to come.

Cheers to Connor Mcdavid – keep doing you and we’ll keep watching it.

It came out a couple of weeks ago that Skinner has re-upped with the team for $7.8 million over three seasons ($2.6 million per).

While I applaud the move to lock up the Stache man for three years, I have to wonder what Holland is thinking with an amount that high.

After all, Holland should surely be aware that the Oilers are up against the cap and will have difficult enough decisions as it is this coming offseason. Skinner was still an RFA after this season and Holland should’ve taken advantage of that by signing Skinner for $1.5 million for the three years, $2 million at the absolute most. After all, the team has the leverage with restricted free agents due to the fact other teams have to pay a high price to sign them in draft pick compensation, it’s the key UFAs you have to back the Brinks truck up to.

Holland failed to take advantage of this, and as a result, now the Oilers have wiped out the cap savings of Milan Lucic’s retained salary and Andrej Sekera’s buyout that will come after this season and then some. Those two transactions will save the Oilers $2.25 million in cap space, and the Oilers could’ve had some cap space left over from that had they signed Skinner to a lower amount. As it stands now the Oilers will have to find another $350,000 of cap space just to pay for Skinner after this season – which might not be that much in the grand scheme of things but is very much a self-inflicted wound as we could’ve come out of that with space to spare instead of having to find extra.

There’s also the fact that goalies are hard to predict long-term and Skinner is a mere 36 games into his NHL career. What if he struggles next year? If Holland had signed him to a value bridge contract this wouldn’t be as much of an issue if it happens. Now the Oilers would still have to pay Skinner $1.7 million just to play in the minors.

This seems to be a frustrating weakness of Holland – he doesn’t take advantage of the savings we can get from RFAs and as a result, he’s reducing the team’s ability to spend its cap more efficiently.

There’s also the fair point that goalies normally don’t get a lot of cap space allotment unless they’re absolutely surefire elite guys (Jacob Markstrom notwithstanding) because unlike with skaters there are not usually a lot of jobs available around the NHL because teams only need two goalies vs. 12 forwards plus subs and six defencemen plus subs. As a result, league-wide there is typically less demand for goalies which means you can sign them for cheaper.

The smart play would’ve been to sign Skinner for $1.5 million over three years and tell him if he still performs during that time then he’ll get a healthy raise after that.

There will be several cap issues for Holland to deal with next season, especially a new deal for Evan Bouchard. Signing Skinner for over $1 million too much will mean less cap space he’ll have to re-up Bouchard, or even the lesser guys like Ryan Mcleod, Klim Kostin, or Derek Ryan.

Combine this with the $750,000 in extra cap space we would’ve had from the expiration of the Lucic and Sekera dead cap hits and that’s almost $2 million in cap space that’s now wiped out that we sorely need.

So I love the player that was extended but hate the amount he was extended for. If Holland doesn’t want the Oilers to turn into a less extreme version of the Toronto Maple Laffs, he’ll have to start using the leverage from our RFAs more and not less.

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