Might Edmonton Oilers have drafted and developed an actual NHL goaltender? Huge news if true

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2022 Edmonton Oilers prospects
#3 Stuart Skinner

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Previously: #8 in 2021

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It’s been a long time since Edmonton Oilers drafted a goaltending prospect and subsequently developed him into an NHL-class stopper. In fact, it’s happened just three times in franchise history, and just once in the last forty (40) years:

Make it 2123 NHL games for the trio, pretty impressive. In fact, it amounts to 88% of all GP by netminders ever drafted by the Oilers! The other 42 guys combined to play just 288 games. Fuhr (150) Moog (132) and Dubnyk (26) accounted for more than that in the playoffs for goodness sakes.

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Of the rest, only Jussi Markannen really had a career, but that came after he was drafted at age 26 and already almost fully developed. He needed just 4 AHL games before being promoted to his true calling of a serviceable NHL backup, ultimately playing 128 big league games over five seasons.

Worth pointing out that Fuhr and Dubnyk were the only two stoppers the Oilers ever drafted in the first round. That’s the portion of the draft where the club has had by far the lion’s share of its drafting success, especially in the current century. Otherwise, their success rate drafting NHL goalies in other rounds is, by my math, 1½ out of 43. That’s… not good.

But it may be about to change as Stuart Skinner enters the chat.

He’s been around the fringes of it for quite some time already, of course, having been drafted by the NHL club back in 2017. At that time the Oilers liked him enough to bundle two draft choices (previously obtained in separate trades of Nail Yakupov and Philip Larsen) to move up four spots in the third round to take Skinner at #78 overall.

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And what do you know, they may have drafted an actual goalie.

Skinner was of the player type the Oilers seem to prefer these days, namely a “late birthday”. The product of Edmonton’s own South Side Athletic Club program had just one year of junior remaining, but made the most of it. A midseason trade from Lethbridge to Swift Current ignited a major roll. Skinner led the Broncos to the Ed Chynoweth Cup, posting six postseason shutouts along the way and outduelling another promising netminder from these parts, Carter Hart, in the league finals.

Turning pro before his 20th birthday, Skinner spent most of his first season gaining experience in the ECHL, then graduated to the AHL the following year. His save percentages were nothing special in those early years, but in the last two campaigns he turned that around nicely. He established himself as the #1 in Bakersfield, backstopping a Pacific Division playoff title along the way. Moreover he performed well in the NHL during several recalls primarily related to various injuries suffered by Oilers starter Mike Smith.

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That amounted to just one game in 2021, an 8-5 win over Ottawa, as Dave Tippett’s coaching staff rode Mikko Koskinen hard during Smith’s one-month absence. This past season, however, with Smith battling physical issues right through to the All-Star break, Tippett and company had no choice but to give their young backup some action. He played well enough to earn more.

By the time Jay Woodcroft got promoted in early February, Smith was finally well enough to play and/or too stubborn to come back out. While some pundits guessed Woodcroft might gravitate to his #1 man from Bako, Skinner got just one game under the new regime, this time replacing Koskinen who was out with COVID.  He made the most of it, earning his first NHL shutout in San Jose and leaving a lasting positive impression on his growing legion of fans.

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On the surface his numbers were sound. Just a 6-6-0 record (goal support was an issue), but a team best 2.62 goals-against average and a very decent .913 save percentage that comfortably led the club at the time of his reassignment. Enough to leave me wondering, Did the Oilers just send their best goaltender to the AHL?

But as noted in that post, the Oilers coaching staff had found a way to “shelter” Skinner. Normally that is very difficult to do for a goalie given the guy is out there for all 60 minutes of most games that he starts, but his coach can carefully pick and choose which games those will be. Skinner’s game log tells a tale:

13 appearances, but just 2 of them — losses to Boston and Dallas — against playoff teams. Suggesting there’s still plenty of proving to be done in 2022-23, even as expectations have risen.

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They certainly have risen here at the Cult of Hockey, where Skinner has achieved the highest ranking of any goaltender in our annual summer prospect series at #3. Here’s the scorecard of the now 15 would-be stoppers who have been in the system just since 2015.

Best comparison here is the only other guy to ever crack the top 5 on our rankings, namely Laurent Brossoit. He was acquired by trade, not draft pick, which is why he wasn’t discussed earlier, even as he followed the same general development path: WHL -> ECHL -> AHL -> NHL.

Brossoit showed promise but was lightly used in Edmonton, and the club eventually lost him as a Group VI free agent for that very reason. Since moving on first to Winnipeg, then Vegas, the former Oil Kings stalwart has established himself as a decent backup netminder at the big league level, playing between 14-24 NHL games behind an established workhorse in each of the past 5 seasons.

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One has to dive a little further into the past to find a better comp from within the Oilers system. That would be Devan Dubnyk, another affable big man with some similarities of playing style.

First, their year-by-year results starting when both entered the WHL as 15-year-olds on short-term trials. From there both followed very similar paths. For clarity we have adopted hockeydb.com‘s convention of different colour backgrounds for different leagues.

Worth noting that Dubnyk is the older player by six months in each season shown, although it was Skinner who was the older on his actual draft day due to that late birthday. That may have had an effect of lowering his draft position as he had something of a down year at .905 after posting an excellent .920 save percentage as a 17-year-old.

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The consistency of games played — a major currency for goaltenders in particular — from each to the other is remarkable. The biggest difference came in their respective 22-year-old campaigns, which for Skinner was curtailed by COVID that greatly shortened the AHL season. Both netminders were consistently healthy.

On the results side, Dubnyk posted slightly the higher save percentages in each league except one — the NHL. Two things worth noting: that’s the smallest sample for each man, and in Dubnyk’s case he was initially recalled to one of the worst Oilers teams of all time, the Pat Quinn season of 2009-10 where the Oilers finished last overall by 12 points. With veteran Nikolai Khabibulin on the shelf and fellow rookie Jeff Deslauriers as his running mate, he was basically thrown to the wolves.

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This was is the exact point where the rubber met the road for young Dubnyk, who over the following three seasons played 120 games with an excellent .917 save percentage before eventually crashing and burning behind The Swarm in 2013-14. He went on to recover his form and his career in Minnesota.

But for Stuart Skinner, those pages have yet to be written. His chance to seize the starting role is more limited, given the Oilers just signed Jack Campbell to a five-year, $25 million pact to do just that. Still, the door is wide open to seize a full-time NHL job and to make his mark from there.

Expectations for 2022-23: After four years of exemption from waivers (goalies get one more year than skaters), Skinner has now reached the stage where that exemption has expired. Which makes him a lead pipe cinch to make the Oilers to start the season and to stick around for as long as he can get the job done. With one year remaining on his contract at the NHL minimum of $750,000, he’ll have the opportunity to provide exceptional value. The rookie can do just that by playing 25-30 games as a reliable #2 stopper.

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Cult of Hockey prospect series

Our panel of voters includes the Cult of Hockey‘s writing trio of David Staples, Bruce McCurdy and Kurt Leavins, along with our Edmonton Journal colleague and long-time Oilers scribe Jim Matheson.

Follow me on Twitter @BruceMcCurdy