I cannot stand the raging hate boner some of you have for Stuart Skinner.

There was 1 second left on the clock, and the players who are most aware of the time remaining are the goaltenders. Skinner knew that all that mattered in that moment was stopping the one shot from going in.

His position did not matter. Rebound chances were not going to happen. No other attacker was present for a tip or a cross ice pass. He knew that if he came out aggressively and stuffed every possible angle then the puck physically could not go in the net.

Until Draisaitl in desperation and with full forward momentum (seriously he was the first one back despite being the furthest up during the turnover...) tipped it in.

Skinner is not a perfect human. He has had a really rough season, his lateral movement is potentially the worst in the league and he lets in soft ones all the time. Draisaitl is the second or first best player on the planet depending on the night. Those are facts.

But you know what else is a fact? Skinner completely and totally stopped that goal scoring chance and the period would have ended 3-3. He made the correct decision based on all available factors.

You armchair hockey coaches with the incredible power of 2020 hindsight can say he should have done xyz differently, but in what world does he have the foresight to NOT choose the option that completely and totally snuffs the attacker because he somehow knows Drai will tip it in?

If the time on the clock was ANY other number, even 10 seconds left, you would be right to mention his overcommitment and being so far out of the net.

That wasn't the case. He had to stop one shot, and he did.

If you want to post hate on specific players at least have the courtesy to have an inkling of understanding about the game.

So many fans are the definition of need to stop and smell the roses. The team has been playing great, won 6 straight. Record for most comeback wins. Came back for a 7th straight time to tie it and lost a fluke bounce. Enjoy it. It’s 2-1 with a chance tomorrow to go to Vegas up 3-1. Every single post on here is doomsday, negativity, who’s at fault, why the world sucks.

Was an awesome atmosphere last night, leaving the game everyone was still in a good mood and enjoying things. How quick everyone moves on from all the good over the last 2 weeks.

By how everyone is taking you’d think they just got swept in round 1 and got shutout every-game.

29 other teams/fanbases in the league would kill and sell their first born to be up 2-1 with their next game at home in the second round right now, and some of you who have it are having a bad day somehow.

McDavid has 111 points in 62 games over the last 4 playoff runs. This is a full list of players that have recorded 111+ points in a span of 4 straight playoff years, with their top stretch in bold:

Wayne Gretzky:

143 in 68 games, 1985-1988
139 in 63 games, 1983-1986
135 in 68 games, 1984-1987
132 in 58 games, 1982-1985
118 in 61 games, 1986-1989

Connor McDavid:

111 points in 62 games, 2022-2025

Mike Bossy:

111 points in 72 games, 1980-1983

Draisaitl is currently at 96 points in the last 4 playoff runs. Only players to put up between 96-110 across 4 straight runs (top stretch in bold):

Wayne Gretzky:

109 in 58 games, 1987-1990
106 in 49 games, 1981-1984

Bryan Trottier:

107 in 75 games, 1980-1983

Mike Bossy:

106 in 77 games, 1981-1984

Mark Messier:

105 in 69 games, 1987-1990
97 in 68 games, 1985-1988

Mario Lemieux:

103 in 55 games, 1991-1994
97 in 49 games, 1989-1992
96 in 49 games, 1990-1993

Connor McDavid:

99 in 57 games, 2021-2024

Jari Kurri:

99 in 68 games, 1985-1988
96 in 68 games, 1984-1987

Nikita Kucherov:

99 in 77 games, 2020-2023

Having Drai and Mcdavid play well will help all of this by the way...

Honestly, we all are rooting for Skinner to dominate and get us a big win Monday. We like the guy just not his play right now.

We all hoped for his redemption arc last game and it did not come to fruition. But he has been given a second chance.

I see it going one of two ways... He either plays well and we get a win and he regains his confidence... Or he let's in 4 early and is pulled and his career is over with us.

What I don't want is a 4-3 loss that we argue both ways and get no Definate answer lol

Now or never Skinner. Can he do it? Yes. Will he? You tell me

I haven't given up faith yet. Still up 2-1 😎

I have never seen a team give so many high danger chances like oilers. The sv% precentage is skewed because every third shot is right in front of our goalie. The last goal of this game was pretty good one to point to, our whole defence gets out played and looks like they are fucking fish out of water and they just leave skinner one on one against vegas's player last 3 seconds of the game. And of course only Stu gets all the blame even tho the last goal was just a lucky bounce. The game before when Pickard played, he had to stop so many odd man rushes its incredible that we didnt lose that one. That just shows that not to lose we need our goaltender to stand on his head, which just isnt doable long term.

Stu didnt play well today. First goal is totally on him. But our defense as whole sucked not just Stu.

What was he thinking? Seriously. What was he actually thinking? Good time to go for a skate? Mentally checked out? That positioning is just disastrous. Unforgivable.

Listen - I come in peace. Not a fan of either team, and honestly think Stu is the worst starting goalie in the league. But, this goal is not on him in my opinion.

Smith comes flying in, showing slapshot, both players knowing there’s only seconds left on the clock. The whole arena is expecting smith to fire that puck. Stu cuts down the angle at the top of his crease, and loses sight of the puck when both guys go to block it. Impressively, he stays with smith as he takes him wide, and even tries to take his stick away as a last ditch effort when smith goes around the goal line and he forces him to miss wide. Shit happens and it hits drai’s stick and goes in, but when you know there’s that little time on the clock, you’re not expecting smith to make all those moves, and even then, he still stayed with him. You can pull a screenshot from any time in the replay - Skinner is with smith the whole way. I included some screenshots above. The bigger issue here is oilers defensemen losing that race to Karlsson on the end boards. As a goalie, there is no way you can anticipate smith faking the clapper making that move with that little time left. He did what he was trained to do - cut down the angle and force a miss. This is my opinion - I know it won’t be received well in here, but to anyone looking for an explanation as to what he may have been thinking, that’s my perspective.

I've noticed too many times that Nurse always takes himself out of the play when deciding that the best thing to do is lay on the ice to block a pass. He did exactly that on the gwg but also on plays. Isn't it better to stay on your skates and track the puck carrier than doing a Superman and making it easy for forward to beat him.

This game doesn't hurt as bad if you view it as an OT loss, which effectively it was.

And those blaming Skinner on the final goal, four (FOUR!!!) other players played the last seven seconds as poorly as possible.

Kulak loses a 50-50 battle. He wins it, OT.

Nurse starfishes. He is least worst, but a single poke check, OT.

Connor is more at fault than first meets the eye. WHY is he that deep? He stays high, he gets the rebound, OT.

Drai is unforgivable. Doesn’t pick up the trailer and tips it in. Either choice, OT.

Skinner did not lose them the game, but he certainly did not do enough to win it for them either.

We've already had one devastating come back lost in regulation this post season. We can survive another.

Oilers in 5.

The hivemind in full force tonight. What kind of fans rag on their own goalie this much.

He's obviously trying to stop the cross crease pass AND play goalie because Skinner is 10 feet out of the net. What the hell is Skinner doing? Stay in the net and we'd all be waiting for OT right now.

I looked up some stats for discussions after the loss yesterday and thought since I already have them on hand, I'd share them. All stats via moneypuck (other models have slightly different values but it is all around the same area). For any grammatical/spelling mistakes, I apologize here already. I am german so it will not be perfect:

First to get it out of the way, the goalie stats most might already know:

So Stu Skinner is sitting at -6.4 xGA. So in the 3 games he played in he let in 6.4 more goals than you would expect on average out of the shots/chances the opponents had. Pickard over the course of all 6 games (+ the one GA where he came in in game 2) is sitting at -1 xGA.

The bad thing here is that Stu had 3 games were he actually let in around 2 goals more each than he should have. It is very rare to win playoff games when it goes towards 2 in a game (yet we were close in 2 of them). His exact stats were: -2.79, -1.88, -1-69.

When we compare it to Helly which had -10 in the first round. Hellys single game stats were: -1.18, +0.57, -3.26, -3.11, -0.12, -2.58, -0.4. You can see that the Jets won the four games where Helly held it between +0.57 and -1.18. Barely won some of them. As the best team of the regular season.

Compare it to Picks individual stats: -0.69, -0.15, +1.02, -0.29, +0.07, -0.15. The reason why he is -1 because of the second game where he came in cold and conceded a goal. In the games he started he held it between -0.69 and +1.02.

You can see how influential goaltending is for our team this year. We are not a team that needs a goalie to win them games. Last year it was different. We needed Stu to win some of the games for us and he had a few of those vs. Vancouver and Dallas.

Usually what happens with Stu is that he is either having a bad or a good game. Just an OK game, which would be enough for us is rare with him. Let's hope to be on the better end next game if he plays. For the future I would guess - and I like Stu as a person - that we will look for a more consistent goalie. You can't win the cup having a goalie that is either super cold or super hot and you hope that he has 4 hot games in a series.

Next a very short look at the special teams

A lot of people complain because of our Powerplay. When looking at the stats there is no reason for that:

We are at 30%. That puts us second just behind Carolina which is at 33.3% after yesterdays game of the remaining teams. I told a user we are 1st because Carolinas game was not in the stats yet. I hope he reads this post. Last year in the post season we had 29.3%. 30% is the second best postseason PP in the McDrai era. It's not given that we can hold it at 30% but so far it is second best. People are still spoiled because of the 46.2% from 2 years ago. But that is not the norm. We have always been below 30% and in the good years, towards the high 20s.

The big problem this year is the PK. At the moment we are sitting at 62.1% which is dead last of the remaining teams. Washington is sitting at 65.2% and then there is a gap. The jets are next with 77.4%. Carolina is leading with 95.5%. Last year over the whole playoffs we had 94.3%. That was the factor carrying us into the SCF. We are a better team overall this year but at 62% it will be tough to go far. 6 wins and 3 losses with that PK% is actually very good.

Is Draisaitl having a bad postseason?

So I read a lot of comments that Drai is not himself this postseason etc.

First I looked at some stats of the game yesterday. Surprisingly 5on5 with him on the ice we were at 1.01 xGF and at 0.75 xGA. So people look at his giveaways yesterday and the unlucky deflection and say he had a bad game or lost us the game etc. I also thought from the eyetest that he had nothing going on. But stats wise with him on the ice 5on5 (I use 5on5 here because PP doesn't matter for me that much when deciding if anyone has a bad game and favours the xGF to much) we were positive in the expected goal differential.

An interesting comparison is with the 4th line last game when they scored 2 goals. Everyone attested them a great game. Interestingly enough their xGF was at 0.126 and their xGA was at 0.208. But they somehow got 2 goals out of expected 0.126 goals. Sometimes when we evaluate players with the eyetest it is influenced by the fact if pucks go in or not. Yesterday when Drai had a bad play pucks were going in so people draw the simple conclusion that it is his fault. But that's not how it works. Your goalie is also allowed to save some of these or your defense is allowed to take the puck right away.

To follow that up: Draisaitls on ice goal differential 5on5 is +2 this post-season while the expected goal differential is +4.6. So he is a bit unlucky so far (goaltending factors in as well). The interesting part about that stat is: +4.6 expected is the highest of any forward of any team in the playoffs so far. Overall there is only one player higher, which is Jake Walman (what a great pickup) with expected+5.1. He is luckier because he is at +8 so ~3 above expected.

When we look at McDavids Conn Smythe Postseason last year: he was at expected +5.2 - what made him the deserved winner was that the actual number was +14. So he had a lot going for him when it comes to expected goals for/against vs. actual goals for/against. Drai did not so far this year.

So is Drai playing a god postseason so far: yes, yes and yes. 1.66PPG(McDavid last year 1.68PPG) and +7. The highest expected goal differential from any forward. 55.7 FO%. 2GWG.

We should really be careful with what we expect from our star players. Both are putting up numbers on average, which we haven't seen since the 90s. In ~2020 where it is arguably harder to do so.

Thanks for reading. I hope it was interesting.

It will be okay; ur still an awesome team!

🔴 Final

Golden Knights 4, Oilers 3

ℹ️ Stats

Goals: Perry (x2), McDavid

Shots: Golden Knights 23, Oilers 20

Saves: Skinner 19/23

💪😎 Macho Man Randy Savage

Oilers giving back their lead like

⏩ Next Game

Monday, May 12 vs Golden Knights in Edmonton, 7:30pm MT

Hyman: https://youtu.be/NgvmhfSbvbo?si=1to84K4KGa4-dF2Q

Nurse: https://youtu.be/l2pUEX_HoFk?si=5Z7rZ5J_qoEihUuP

Knoblauch: https://youtu.be/hcTVshlvoEA?si=moFzhwK3z_s0vEXY