Stuart Skinner is renowned for being one of the coolest cats on the Edmonton Oilers, whether it be on or off the ice. That's why there was so much surprise about how he acted at the conclusion of Saturday night's game in Vancouver, against the Canucks.
Despite the Oilers having just completed a convincing 7-3 win over their Canadian rivals, Skinner slammed his stick and was clearly angry about something. As a result, teammates attempted to placate the goalie while congratulating him for the victory.
This understandably led to the question of why the usually calm and collected 26-year-old would react the way he did, especially after such a decisive win for the Oilers.? Well, there's a couple of reasons which can likely explain this, both for Saturday's game specifically and for the season in general.
It's all about the team
The first is the defensive performance of Skinner's teammates. It's no secret that the overall effort of the blue line in particular has been sloppy so far in 2024-25, due to the combination of certain defencemen leaving the team and others who just haven't played up to their usual talent level.
This much is clear, when you have a team which is tied 12th-worst in the NHL when it comes to average goals allowed per game following Saturday's slate of action. Not helping the cause, is when you also have lowest penalty kill efficiency in the entire league, at a shocking 59.0 percent.
In respect of Saturday's game specifically, we would contend that Skinner wasn't really at fault for any of the three goals he allowed. As for what tipped him over the edge, it could well have been the third goal, which came after a totally unnecessary penalty by Evan Bochard and was subsequently scored by an uncovered Pius Suter.
It's just like last season for Skinner
The other reason relates to Skinner himself, who is off to another slow start in 2024-25 (as with the majority of his team). At the time of writing he has just a 4-5-1 record in 10 starts, with his .883 save percentage and 3.25 Goals Against Average (GAA) both projected to be career-worsts.
As with last season, we are confident the Edmonton native will recover and eventually look more like the goalie who backstopped the Oilers all the way to a Game 7 in the Stanley Cup Final. However, he's not there yet, although we will note he so far has two wins in three November starts, in the process producing a .906 save percentage and 2.68 GAA.
With Skinner doing his best to get back on track, maybe the anger at the end of Saturday's game was due to everything starting to get to him, i.e. feeling like he's letting his teammates down. No matter how much or little blame we would attach to the goals he allowed, it still doesn't look good when you're letting in three on just 20 shot attempts.
Taking everything into account, we suspect that the 2023 NHL All-Star's anger was probably as a result of some frustration with both himself and his teammates. He knows he has to be better, but also needs more support and quality play from those in front of him.
Overall, the Oilers still need to be better in general, in order to improve on their decidedly average 7-7-1 record after 15 games and make a serious push for the playoffs. If not, expect to see more obvious displays of anger and frustration, whether it be Skinner or other players on the team.