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 oilfan94
Messages: 556
Registered: June 2006
Location: USA
No Cups
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| Adam wrote on Wed, 18 December 2024 13:33 |
| Hibernia wrote on Wed, 18 December 2024 09:51 |
| HamBlaster wrote on Wed, 18 December 2024 05:45 |
the insanely terrible effort on Reinhart's goal last night are perfect examples.
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I stopped reading when I got here. When McDavid scores this goal, we talk about the great skill. But when Reinhart does it, it's because of an "insanely terrible effort" on the part of our goalie. If you're going to complain any goal from the FLA game, this isn't it.
Every goalie has bad games and the Oilers spend less than just about everyone on goaltending. If you're expecting Vezina level goaltending from start-to-finish every season, good luck. Sure, the Rangers are about to pay their #1 more than anyone in the history of the sport (and with a Milan Lucic style bulletproof contract) for most the next decade and their dude hasn't played as well as Skinner since the beginning of December.
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I've seen the Edm media beating this drum too lately - look how the Oilers manage to get semi-competent goaltending while spending less than anyone! But is that a good decision? Yes, you can never have a perfect team in a cap season, so there's always some level of compromise at some position but the goalie is the only player on the ice 60ish minutes a game, and he's the one who can single-handedly lose games or series for you, so should we be skimping there?
As CrusaderPi pointed out, we've gone several seasons in a row with relatively cheap but mediocre tandems and the result is that goaltending has been a significant weakness through that time. Mike Smith imploding was a big factor in the sweep to Colorado (and if the Oilers hadn't blown the doors off Calgary offensively, he could have cost us that prior series too as he was awful throughout). Skinner completely crapped the bed against Vegas two years ago and almost duplicated that against Vancouver last year. I believe Koskinen/Smith were pretty terrible against Chicago and Winnipeg too.
At what point do we think that maybe under-spending on goaltending might be holding us back?
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Problem as well is that when the Oilers did spend on a goalie, it was on the wrong guy. There were a lot of warming signs that Campbell was not going to fit well on the Oilers, but they went for it, and now we basically have several million in dead cap space related to goalies for the next 3 years after this season (up to $2.6M in 2027 still going to Campbell).
The contracts that both our goalies are on right now are actually pretty good for what they give us overall. We pay for 2 backups and that is what we have. Goaltending is a fickle position, and if the Oilers went out and spent to get someone with a solid track record, I am not convinced it would be substantially better than what we have now, unless we got Conner Hellebuyck. Skinner's stats are pretty bad right now due to the bad start (again), and it would be great to have someone more consistent, but if you look at his quality starts stat on hockey-reference.com he is actually above average. Problem is just when he has a bad game, it is a really, really bad game.
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