What can the Oilers do about their goaltending this summer?

The Edmonton Oilers may have lost their best chance at improving their goaltending when the Anaheim Ducks sent John Gibson to the Detroit Red Wings, as the market beyond Gibson sees a significant drop off. So with Gibson gone, what’s the next best option for the Oilers?

Matthew Barnaby joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about the Oilers’ goaltending situation and how they can improve it with Gibson off the market.

Matthew Barnaby: John Gibson was by far the best available goalie out there. And we talked about the Oilers at the trade deadline not making the deal, and it came back to haunt them. If they had John Gibson, I think they win the Stanley Cup. Bobrovsky steals a couple games. Skinner, Pickard together as a team is just not good enough, we’ve seen that two years in a row.

So yeah, I think Jake Allen’s the next available guy. There’s nothing on the free agent market you’re going after. There’s absolutely no one that makes you a better team in net on the free agent market. So it’s going to be through trade, whether it’s tomorrow, or they start the year and they address it during the year or come trade deadline when someone becomes available, that can be something to pay attention to.

But yeah, process of elimination, addition by subtraction, whichever way you want to put it, they did not become a better team yet, and we’ll see what they do tomorrow.

Tyler Yaremchuk: I would imagine we have an answer on Jake Allen pretty quickly tomorrow into our free agent show. But the interesting thing too is if he sits there and goes, “Hey, the Philadelphia Flyers are offering me $5 million a year because they have the cap space”, there might be a world where Edmonton goes “Okay, we can’t match that because of everything else we have to do”. And then at that point, are you bringing in, as you said, Anton Forsberg might be the next best guy on the free agent market.

Maybe there is something to, if you’re the Oilers, you just wait until the deadline and go, “We’re not going to hamstring ourselves with a bad free agent contract”. They know Skinner and Pickard can get them to the playoffs, that’s not the concern. So maybe you’re right. Tomorrow, there are more mistakes made than good deals. We need to remember that.

You can watch the full episode here…