It's no one players sole fault for the Oilers losing in the playoffs last season, but what I do know is McDavid is one of the best players in NHL history and Stuart Skinner is a backup goalie and one of the worst starting goalies in the NHL today. Skinner almost lost them their series against the Canucks all by himself and had an under .900 save percentage in half of the playoffs games he played while the Oilers allowed the fewest shots on net per game of any team that played past the first round. McDavid on the other hand was playoff MVP and had a playoff performance only players like Gretzky and Lemieux have ever had.
To suggest Skinner wasn't a liability in last seasons playoffs based on one game where he allowed a bad game winning goal against versus a really strong defensive team is laughable when he was so bad so often in those playoffs. McDavid on the other hand was responsible for them making one of the greatest playoff series comebacks of all time. Yeah, lets blame McDavid for them not winning the Cup. Not the other 17 skaters in the lineup who could have scored a key goal or Skinner could have come up big for them to get the win also. Skinner only ever seems to make a big save after blowing the game by letting in a weak goal, he rarely ever seems make a quality save when the Oilers have the lead or it's a tie game, which is why he is not a starting goalie. You can expect a starting goalie to make big saves for your team, you can't ever expect that out of Skinner, you can barely expect him to make saves he should make.
We can agree to disagree on this one.
Fair enough -- looks like we're going to end up agreeing to disagree on this but I want to make very clear what I mean before someone else comes in with a strawman that I'm not actually arguing.
First of all, I'm not saying it's 100% solely McDavid's fault they lost game 7. I put that game down to Edm offense mostly being shut down by a very good defensive effort by Florida. Some credit goes to Florida (incl the coaching staff), some blame goes to Edm's lack of offense of which McDavid is probably the biggest part. And yet, Edmonton had a top-5 offense with so many stars, superstars (and decent scoring depth), if players like RNH or Hyman or Corey Perry or Dylan Holloway had chipped in (like some of them did against Vancouver game 7), then this is a completely different conversation. I'm also saying that if McDavid had produced in that game at his usual level, I personally believe it
very likely that the Oilers win the cup.
Second, I'm only talking about Skinner's performance in Game 7 of the finals, not throughout the entire playoffs. In gm 7, I wouldn't consider his performance a liability, but even if you want to argue that it was, the offense still needs to score more than one goal in order for the team to realistically expect to win. And yes, McDavid is one of the best players in NHL history but that doesn't excuse the offense drying up, if anything it probably makes it worse because we all know how dynamic he can be.
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Regarding prior playoffs, I'm not an OIlers fan, though I tuned into random 3rd periods here and there. Not enough to form an informed opinion on Skinner's play prior to the Western Conference Final. If he was a liability earlier in the playoffs, then fine -- I didn't see enough Oilers games to have a strong opinion either way.
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Anyway though my larger point is that SCF gm 7 was decided by Edm's offense letting them down (or Fla's defensive effort shutting them down), neither of those has anything to do with Stuart Skinner's goaltending performance in gm7. I honestly do not blame Skinner, at all, for the Oilers losing that game (and therefore, the cup).
