Was Skinner good enough?

Was skinner good enough ?

Tompkins is not an NHL Starter .. but the team in front of him.. the same team giving Tristan Jarry back to back shutouts…. Made his night predictable and manageable. The one goal that did make it through was debatably interference. It wasn’t a slow night for him .. and he made some saves. Showed composure.. but what we are seeing is a team that can potentially thrive with the goal tending they have.

Now before you come at me with “skinner wasn’t the problem” “maybe we should never have dealt him”

I’m here to completely dismantle that argument.

The issues that matter when the team is doing everything right are “low danger shot %” , unforced errors, breakaway save percentage.. puck handling and rebound control. And most importantly.. TIMELY. Saves .. aka pk saves, and the saves made when the scoreboard is tight and momentum is critical. Skinner was an absolute failure in all those regards. At best he was extremely inconsistent.. On countless occasions we saw the Dee box out players to low danger areas only to see skinner let a soft shot leak past him. Most memorable was the scf game winning goal in game 7. But in both those scf .. skinner stopped exactly zero of the breakaways he faced. His puck handling and rebound control caused a lot of stagnation in our zone. We seldom saw the big save that resulted in a goal the other way. He wasn’t good enough and he is not good enough to lead any team anywhere. We made it to two scf final in spite of him . Not thanks to him. Put Levi in that crease and we might have hoisted two cups by now.

Granted.. skinner’s job would be made easier with this system in front of him. His mental lapses and letting in soft goals would collapse the current structure . This isn’t to gratuitously kick skinner while he’s down. I think the guy was super charming and a great personality. I think he could be a good backup somewhere eventually… but not a tandem piece and definitely not a starter.

It’s all but impossible to play to your structure when you know that even if you do everything right your goalie can sink your game. Predictability is important.

We saw endless eye rolls on the bench as skinner let garbage go by him over the years. That takes the wind out of the team’s sails. People blamed lacking offence but offence cannot happen when ur gripping your sticks as a result of not trusting the back end.

What we see in Devon Levi is a very stable , traditional and predictable goal tender with excellent lateral movement .. he’s seldom found flopping around in his crease and tho the sample size is small. He is clearly our guy for now..

Jarry , I am still not sold on but he can easily be the backup if he sustains this level of play. His puck handling alone makes him an upgrade on skinner but that bar is incredibly low. He is injury prone and inconsistent. When Anderson comes back in the fold we will see a nice competition for 1b slot.

Don’t lament skinner .. he was never what anyone thought he was. The only thing we may have been wrong about is how much of a liability our Dee actually was. He did a good job of making them look bad. Our coaches did too. Every error found the way to the back or the net.

We have better coaching and better goal tending and those two things are making the difference for now.

While on the subject of goaltending.. I just want to point out that DACH .. is playing a dirty game vs other goalies. He took out coolie, and ran wolf in the next period. And last night we saw him “oops I fell” into the goalie again. Some fans like this crap. But intent to injure in my view is disgraceful and doesn’t belong in this league.. even if you look at it as a “you gotta do whatever it takes” you are begging for another team to retaliate on our goalies. Appreciating Dach, his size and his scoring .. but he needs to mellow that aspect before it forces some karma .. the way he plays is a liability to OUR GOALIES . Which for once in ages we have some.