“I’m excited”: Skinner ready with the pressure on for Oilers starter tonight
The Edmonton Oilers enter tonight with their season on the line and goaltender Stuart Skinner will be tasked with keeping it alive.
After backup Calvin Pickard put in two brilliant performances in Games 4 and 5, the team will now look to the struggling Skinner to help save their season. Results in his first three outings of this series has been disappointing, but that isn’t stopping him from looking forward to getting back between the pipes.
“I’m very excited to get back in the net, I’m excited to get to do my job again,” Skinner told reporters this morning with a smile.
“I’m very excited to get back in the net.”
Skinner speaks ahead of starting in tonight’s Game 6.@Enterprise | #LetsGoOilers pic.twitter.com/uYXIWRZPJK
— Edmonton Oilers (@EdmontonOilers) May 18, 2024
The sophomore goaltender had a few extra days to reflect and work on his game with Pickard picking up the workload in the middle of the series. Skinner said that the time off was difficult to come to terms with but he used it as an opportunity.
“Any type of situation like that, it’s difficult,” Skinner admitted. “I’ve been working on my mental game for a long time here and it’s just another experience where I got to work on some more stuff mentally.
“Being able to throw that frustration down and just be the best teammate I could possibly be. Had a lot of fun, was able to get my work in, really good for me.”
Skinner hasn’t had to go at it alone. He says that the team has been very supportive of him over the last few days with multiple guys making time to chat and reassure him.
“I know a lot of guys came up to me and gave me their support and they all told me I would get back into the cage at some point and that, obviously, I’m a very important piece to this,” Skinner explained. “Not getting too down on myself and taking this as an opportunity to get better and work on my game and take some time off.”
Part of the work involved over the last few days would include analyzing the types of plays that the Canucks have been beating Skinner on. He added that he understands better their game plan and will have to be at his best if he wants to give his team a chance to stay alive.
“A lot of it was strictly competitiveness,” Skinner said. “These guys they go to the net hard, they always have two guys in front of the net. It’s my job to push back a bit.”
Skinner holds a 5-3 record in this year’s playoffs and an overall .877 save percentage. In this series against Vancouver, that record falls to 1-2 and down to a horrid 0.789 save percentage.
He will have to be much better than that if he wants to force a Game 7 in Vancouver on Monday night.
Tonight’s do-or-die game for the Oilers is set for 6 pm MT.
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