We can always take comfort in the fact that our teams in 2023 and 2024 were probably good enough to win a Cup...our goalie wasn't.
It's actually amazing how many people ignored all the negatives Skinner's playoff performances brought and focused solely on Dallas and the futile comeback from 0-3...ignoring how much of that inescapable rut was on him (.826 in Game 3...Oilers lose by ONE goal).
Also, despite the hogwash about a Sports Psychologist "fixing" Skinner, he was terrible in Game 7 vs Vancouver (.882...and almost lost us the game on his own) and had a save percentage in the .800s in the first three games against Florida. Say what you want about the Oilers only scoring one goal in the first two games, but there's this thing called overtime and Skinner didn't even give the team a CHANCE to make it to OT. And I learned just today that he has the worst GSAx of any playoff goalie in the cap era...
Yet he's still here and still the "starter." This level of administrative incompetence is unprecedented. No team was ever gifted with two centers of this caliber, squandered much of their prime seasons, and when a competitive team was finally built around them accomplished so little because of one glaring problem that was so obvious to so many people.
This would be like Pittsburgh trying to win the Cup in 2015 with Dan Cloutier or Ray Emery...failing miserably the first time almost entirely due to the goalie, and then trying AGAIN with the same shitty goalie the following year. That will be his legacy: a middling goalie that was the undoing of a great team led by generational playoff performers. Forget Dan Cloutier, Skinner is in his own hemisphere for epic disappointments.