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I'm more concerned with the coaching staff than I am with Skinner's defense. A good coach will understand Skinner's talents and use him accordingly. He is an excellent 5v5 goal scorer. You always need that. You can exploit his skills and use him intelligently. I'll worry more about Skinner once I see this team under a better coaching staff. He doesn't make my list of top problems with the team, and by all accounts, he is a good teammate with a positive attitude and good training habits. I'm not expecting them to buy him out, and I'm not going to be upset when they don't. I will be upset if they return with the same staff. I would replace the whole staff, but I might be ok with them cleaning out the assistants. Matty Ellis should be a player development coach or something. He is really good about training habits, hard work and motivation. He should not be behind the bench probably.
This is one of the things I roasted Krueger for and one thing Granato did right. He put Skinner in a position to succeed. Krueger essentially. made an example of him and lit 9M dollars on fire.
The problem is, for Skinner to succeed, the team is going to be limited. And that is what we've seen. When he's force fed o zone starts and give him linemates that will attract attention away from him, he will produce. At an elite rate. But....that essentially locks him into one role, top line LW on a one dimensional line.
It's great for scoring goals.....bad for winning games.
And, to add fuel to the fire, Peterka has effectively passed him on the depth chart. That means his usage next year will likely have to change....what Skinner will we get?
Since Feb 1st, Skinner has:
27 GP, 7G, 5A...and his TOI has gone from 17:33 in October to 13:20 in March.
And it should be noted, 3 of those goals came in a single game.
But, in the end:
Skinner isn't good in transition.
He isn't good on the PP
He isn't good in his own zone
Skinner is extremely good below the faceoff dots in the offensive zone when players around him are attracting attention away from him.
So, well yes, a good coach "can unlock him", it's a bit like have a RWD sports car in a northern climate. Under ideal conditions, its great. But....trying to use it in anything less than that is going to be a horrible experience.
He simply isn't a cog in a winning formula. And we have six years of evidence in Buffalo showing us just that.
So well yes, we can see that a coach can 'unlock' skinner, the fact that he can only be successful in specific conditions really shows how foolish it would be to keep him.