Stuart Skinner gets painfully honest on getting pulled in Oilers’ loss to Jets

The Edmonton Oilers opened the 2024-25 NHL season as the defending Western Conference champions and have been widely considered favorites to win the Stanley Cup after last season’s disappointment. However, their campaign got off to a rough start, to say the least.

The visiting Winnipeg Jets pounded the Oilers into submission Wednesday night at Rogers Place, earning a 6-0 victory and chasing goaltender Stuart Skinner from the Oilers’ net. Skinner was yanked in favor of Calvin Pickard after allowing five goals on just 13 shots, a .657 save percentage.

And as Skinner described afterward, it was anything but the ideal start to his season, via TSN.

“It is very frustrating to start like this. It is just not ideal, I don’t feel great, but I can’t do much about what happened tonight so I’m going to go back to a couple sheets and draw up some new stuff for me to work on and just get better from this,” Skinner said. “I have been pulled before, I have let in five goals in a game before, obviously you just don’t want to do it the first game.

“You don’t want to do it ever. I’ll just get better from this and move on.”

The Oilers stumbled out of the gate last season with a 3-9-1 record, which led to the firing of head coach Jay Woodcroft and the appointment of Kris Knoblauch. Knoblauch believes his players will respond positively to the early-season adversity they now face, via TSN.

“It’s tough to rebound against this team, last year they were the best defensive team in the league, so when you’re giving them goals it’s tough to get them back,” Knoblauch said. “We got punched pretty good tonight but we’ve always been able to respond. Last year, I was happy with our guys, when we did have a bad game we usually responded really well.

“We’ll see this weekend. It’s one game. After this weekend, definitely, that will be a tell of where we are at.

The Oilers take on the visiting Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday night at Rogers Place.

Stuart Skinner is in the midst of a three-year contract with the Oilers

Former Oilers general manager Ken Holland extended goaltender Stuart Skinner to a three-year contract that began last season, with an average annual value (AAV) of $2.6 million.

However, goaltending remains the Oilers’ Achilles heel, and many believe they must upgrade the position immediately if they hope to have another realistic shot at returning to the Stanley Cup Final.

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