3 breakaways, 3 shots past Skinner. Saved by shot going wide 1-2 inches off the outside of the post twice, thank goodness. That would have been so bad to lose to the Ducks twice like this in a week.
Should not have been this close. Played with fire tonight and got lucky. Get back to having some killer instinct.
A goalie's job is to stop the puck from entering the net. A goalie, by definition, cannot be beaten by a shot that misses the net, because his job isn't to prevent pucks from missing the net. There is a reason why hitting the posts don't count as shots on goal. The point is to force shooters into having to place the puck perfectly, which is why they pick corners or areas close to the posts, as those are most likely the open spots available. If they do that and miss the net, the goalie did his job, because he forced the player to target a specific spot which he then failed to hit. It's a game of percentages. The goalie tries to force the shooter into a situation in which it is most unlikely for him to hit the net. Whether that is by firing into the goalie himself, or by missing the net, is entirely irrelevant. Otherwise you might as well claim that if someone dumps the puck into the corner while being on a breakaway, he also "beat the goalie".
Just like if a goalie has his glove right next to the post, and the shooter hits the post, the shooter didn't beat the goalie, because his goal was to put the puck in the net, and for that he would have needed to put it on net, which here would have resulted in shooting into the glove.
Though I guess the next time an Oiler goes on a breakaway and misses the net, you won't complain about him missing a big chance, but instead praise him for beating the goalie.
I really don't get why this lie about the Oilers' management never trying to fix the goalie situation gets repeated again and gain. It simply has nothing to do with reality. Over the last few years they traded for a possible starter (Talbot), tried to sign (Markström) and signed (Campbell) some of the best options the market had to offer. They picked up a veteran starter (Smith), they tried the star-goalie from overseas option (Koskinen) as well as testing what they had in the system (Skinner). Quite a bit of that didn't work out. At times they foolishly put themselves into a bind for no reason (e.g. Koskinen's new contract). One most definately can criticise the outcome, but pretending they didn't try things, is just plain false.
NHL-teams don't operate in a vacuum. They can't force a player to sign with them, or another team to trade them the goalies they want. Fact is, there are a ton of teams out there who have issues in net, some of them for years on end, and there aren't nearly enough good goalies around to fix all these issues. Which puts a premium on the price of the good goalies. Ottawa, after years of struggle in net, just got the one actually high-level starter that came onto the market. It cost them quite a bit, he's very expensive, and while his performances so far have been very good, he still had a slow start and is injured for the second time already.
What the market actually has to offer, is a bunch of question marks. Could one of those turn out to be just what you need? Sure. He could also just as easily turn out to work out as well as Campbell did. For every example of a player surprisingly working out well, you can find a whole bunch who didn't.
Could it hurt to look if something shakes out? No. Could management have been more pro-active at times? Possibly, no one really knows what they tried to do. Saying you have confidence in your goalies doesn't mean you don't look, it just means you don't want to ruin the confidence of your goalies without having another option ready. Though I guess after years of performances that have been all over the place, one could try different options in coaching as well.
Is Skinner a great goalie? No, he isn't. Is he among the worst in the league? No, he isn't. He is a goalie on a cheap contract who is delivering average performances. Or more precisely: he is extremely inconsistent. When he is on his game, he is very good, when he is off his game, he is woeful. Does such a goalie allow back-breaking goals now and then? Sure they do. Look around the league and you will find 2/3s of the fanbases complain about their goalie doing that. Just like they will complain about needing another top 4 defenseman, needing a top 6 forward, lacking depth, and generally being mistreated by refs.