Any of those goalies you've mentioned in other playoff teams is playing behind a much more solid blue line than Skinner.
Skinner:
0.810 sv%, 6.11 gaa, -4.7 GSAX
Pickard:
0.829 sv%, 4.32 gaa, couldn't find GSAX, but it's definitely not good
The goalies are the main problem. The defense could/should be better but they're playing banged up (I'm pretty sure Walman is still injured), and without Ekholm. You can say all you want about "leaving them out to dry" but the numbers are not on your side here. Especially the -4.7 GSAX, which for the unitiated means Skinner has given up nearly 5 more goals than he should have in less than two games. If this was Mikko Koskinen, Oilers fans would have crucified him by now. I can hear the argument that the defense needs to be better, and I agree, but the defense can't be perfect especially when they're injured and down a top player. The defensive numbers are mid to okay through 3 games, the goaltending numbers are horrid. Last night should have been a blowout, Pickard needed to stop the one handed chop going 2 km/h through his 5 hole and at least 1 of the other 3. I know Fiala and Kempe are great shooters, but one of those has to be stopped ideally the Fiala one as it wasn't deflectted. An NHL goalie should be able to make a stop on an unscreened wrist shot from that distance 8/10 times. On both goals Fiala and Kempe wait for the exact moment he drops into the butterfly (which he should not be doing when the shooter is that far out, especially as a smaller guy) and just shoot it over his shoulder.
The double standard between goaltending and defense in this fan base is actually absurd. Bouchard makes one bad turnover and gets absolutely eviscerated by the fan base, and gets blamed for not going after Byfield when he literally just played the 2 on 1 the way you're supposed to: take away the pass, don't pressure the puck carrier, if he would have pressured Byfield there it would have been a pass across for a tap in on the other side and then people would have screamed at him for not playing the 2 on 1 properly, he did his job correctly in that scenario, then he has a spectacular game last night and barely anyone talks about it. Meanwhile the goalies give up 2-3 stinkers a game and everyone just shrugs and looks for the nearest defenseman to blame.
Luckily, Darcy Kuemper has also been terrible, otherwise we'd be in serious, serious trouble.
They need to:
Clean up the penalty kill (I want to see more pressure on the puck carrier), and get a couple more saves a game, if they do this it's Oilers in 6.
The Oilers NEED to get an actual starter in the offseason, Skinner was good early in his career but has now been scouted and teams know how to beat/exploit him. He's weak at sealing the post so go for wraparounds and shoot from sharp angles when he's in RVH, his rebound control is not great so shoot for the pads and make sure you have someone in front, and his lateral movement is weaker than average so get him moving. Pickard has less obvious weaknesses and is overall more reliable so I would go with him for at least the rest of this series. Skinner has a higher ceiling though so if the Oilers manage to get through this series you start him game 1 of round 2 with a short leash. Also, find a way to get Jeff Skinner into the lineup please, take out Frederic or Janmark, no forward has been bad necessarily, but Skinner would be an improvement on what either of those guys have brought so far. Kane was not good in game 2 but was great in game 3, hopefully he can keep it up.
