The Edmonton Oilers defeated the Florida Panthers 5-3 Tuesday night in Sunrise, Fla., forcing a Game 6 Friday night in Edmonton, Alta. With all eyes on forward Connor McDavid, goaltender Stuart Skinner has been phenomenal, stopping 32 of 33 shots in Game 4, then 29 of 32 in Game 5, a .938 save percentage over that span.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL defenseman Colby Cohen discuss the Panthers’ struggles in net and how important Skinner has been in keeping the Oilers’ Stanley Cup hopes alive.
Tyler Yaremchuk: The Oilers have gotten to Sergei Bobrovsky. As things shift back to Edmonton, he needs to find another gear. I don’t think all of the Oilers’ goals were on him, but he needs to be their best player if they want to win.
Colby Cohen: It doesn’t matter if they’re on him, the bottom line is he’s let in nine goals on 39 shots, he’s playing at a .769 save percentage over his last two starts, it’s not good enough.
Ask the Oilers what it was like to get .800-level goaltending through the first three games of the series — and we weren’t blaming Stuart Skinner when they were down 3-0 — but if you want to win a Stanley Cup, you need to be better than average, you need to make saves you shouldn’t.
This is what I’ll say about Skinner: he has made two timely saves that, in my opinion, have changed the entire outlook of this series. He made one in Game 4 when it was 2-1, then you go to Game 5 at the 18:30 mark of the first period, you’re a minute-and-a-half into an elimination game, and he stones Aaron Ekblad. Two minutes later, you get a shorthanded goal from Connor Brown.
The timeliness of those saves has completely flipped the script for the Edmonton Oilers.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…
