I'd rather gaze directly upon the opening of the Ark of the Covenant than spend too much time looking at Stuart Skinner's horrid numbers in the early (but getting late fast) postseason going. The Oilers goalie has allowed 11 goals on just 58 shots over, functionally, five and a half periods, surrendering six to the Kings in a wild Game 1 and five Wednesday night before being yanked for Calvin Pickard. Pickard promptly allowed a goal on the first shot he faced, which, if it was a salve to Skinner's wounded pride, was gifted not netminder-to-netminder, but by an Edmonton defense that is playing like it holds a grudge against its own backstop.
Pickard will almost surely get the start in a must-have Game 3 back in Edmonton, after the Kings took care of business, 6-2. I am not convinced it will matter. "No team in this league can give up the amount of Grade As and high-danger chances that we've been giving up," Darnell Nurse said. "We've been hanging our goalie out to dry."
Consider a pair of L.A. goals last night, the first from Quinton Byfield. With two forwards cheating up and the third clumping with a defenseman in a puck battle along the boards, an unmarked Byfield skated in, cleanly picked the puck, and had all the time and space he needed to undress Skinner.
Here's the second, after Pickard spelled Skinner. I appreciate that whoever cut this video also included a fruitless Kings 3-on-2 at the start of the clip, because if you didn't see it with your own eyes you might not believe that the Oilers could surrender an odd-man rush, then seemingly immediately forget what defensive breakdowns led to it, commit them again, and allow another one. Adrian Kempe did not miss on the 2-on-1.
"What do you want them to do?” Corey Perry asked. “Two-on-ones, the Byfield goal. It's not their fault."
The Skinner-Pickard duo was not exactly Jennings material coming in, but it's been done no favors by the skaters in front of them turning into traffic cones. Part of it is the absence of Mattias Ekholm, Edmonton's best blueliner. Part of it is the devolution of Evan Bouchard, an offensive-minded D to begin with, into an outright liability. A whole lot of it is the rest of the Oilers watching and chasing the puck—I've seen more structure in a Mites scrimmage between periods.
Head coach Kris Knoblauch laid out the issues in that fed-up-coach way: dry but clearly seething. "If they make a heck of a play and [are] able to score goals, you just tip your hat and say, 'There's not much we're able to do.' But I don't think I've seen very much of that." Do not under any circumstances give the Kings credit for the goals they've scored. We've been too ass for beating us to be an accomplishment.
How do the Oilers fix this? Maybe they don't. They've got to win four of five or they're going home for the summer. Or maybe they just need to grab their first lead of the series, to have something to protect. Forwards better start cherrypicking to get that early goal—oh, no, wait, now they're already down in Game 3.
