There’s maybe 5-6 goalies in the league who hold the type of consistent play people expect from Skinner. The rest of them struggle with the exact same inconsistencies as Skinner. Look at the game logs for Gibson of Vejmelka, it’s basically a bad start for every 2-3 good starts and there’s even stretches of 2/3 bad starts in a row over a 5-6-7 game stretch. Almost every single goalie is like this. And I know when faced with the reality of other goalies inconsistencies people will look to move the goal post and go to the team argument but look at the anointed one, Mackenzie Blackwood, that many were so upset the Oilers missed out on. He went from a bottom feeder to a contender and he’s in the midst of an inconsistent stretch where he’s been averaging like a .880
Of course if the Oilers did trade for another goalie say a Gibson or Vejmelka and we put him under the microscope of every second in every game as we do with Skinner and they inevitably showed inconsistencies, had bad games and gave up bad goals, the refrain would the shift to “management just didn’t trade for the right goalie”.
We all know Skinner is an average goalie but swapping him out for another average goalie isn’t going to drastically change the teams fortunes. The best option is trading for a proven top flight goalie, and they aren’t always available, or trading for another average goalie to tandem with Skinner and hoping that between the two of them you can get consistent goaltending.