The Oilers shouldn’t trade Stuart Skinner just to trade him
Edmonton Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner remains a lightning rod of a topic in Alberta as he continues to perform at inconsistent levels.
He was great in a 3-2 overtime win against Chicago on Saturday, but he’d allowed at least three goals in each of his prior three starts before that one. On the whole, he’s 4-3-2 so far this year with a .900 save percentage, a 2.52 goals against average and one shutout to his name.
An upgrade in net has long been a speculated priority for Edmonton to get the team over the hump and capture the Stanley Cup, but at just 26 years of age, it may be too early for the team to give up on Skinner.
On Tuesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed why making a change just to make a change is not the right approach for the Oilers with their goaltending situation.
Tyler Yaremchuk: Some talk that if the goaltending doesn’t get fixed, is Stuart Skinner a cap casualty as they could look to upgrade the position? [He makes] $2.6 million. I don’t think that makes sense, because the names that could be realistically out there, how much of an upgrade are there? Are you just moving on from Skinner for the sake of doing it? What do you make of the idea of moving on from Skinner if it were for a mild upgrade?
Carter Hutton: I think that’s a tough call, and I agree with you. I know Skinner takes a lot of heat, and rightfully so at times. The Jekyll and Hyde in his game, and he can be bad, but I just don’t know where in the market somebody gives you something that is an affordable price to move him. The fact is if you go looking to trade Stuart Skinner, I feel like it immediately shows your weakness in the trade market where teams are going to take advantage of you because they know that you are the team in need of a goalie… and the fact is he’s 26 years old and he’s been to back-to-back Stanley Cups.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…