“You know, sometimes being heckled is an incredible honour.” — Stuart Skinner.
EDMONTON — Who says that?
That rare goalie who is willing to admit he hears the opposing fans when the “Skin-neeeerrr” chants begin on the road. That’s who.
“In Vancouver when I let in six goals? You can definitely hear the whole crowd,” he smiled. “Again, it's an honor to hear that, you know? Everyone's chanting your name.
“Whether it's good or bad, they're chanting your name.”
It all began as some crazy dream for Stuart Skinner, a local kid — the youngest of nine children — who grew up in the cheap seats at old Rexall Place. One day he would step into the crease for his Edmonton Oilers and backstop them to a Stanley Cup.
But the problem with dreams is, they tend to expand. The dreamer may stay focused, but the dream never does.
Like the part about losing his starting job to Jack Campbell coming out of training camp, then going 4-7 with an .865 save percentage in his first dozen starts this season. That wasn’t in the dream.
Or the part about looking up from that spot in the Oilers crease you’ve wanted to inhabit since you were eight years old, and hearing the boos raining down from all the folks who were supposed to be your allies here in Edmonton.
What part of the dream was that, we asked Skinner on Thursday?
“To be honest that is the dream,” he said. “You know, sometimes being heckled is an incredible honour.”
“When I was really young, I read a quote from a goalie who said, ‘The best job in the world is all the fans booing at you because you let in a goal.’ This is the best job I’ll ever have, and I'm very fortunate to be heckled and to be booed.
“Some people say I suck? That's great. I just keep on working on my game,” he said. “It's nice that I'm a hometown boy, and that I grew up in the city. But no matter where you are, that comes with the job."
There is something special about this thoughtful young ‘tender, a self-awareness that is becoming extinct in the NHL’s population of rich kids who skated their path through the Academies. Who never had to make a team because their fathers simply paid the $40,000 it cost to put them on the team.
He is only 25, but Skinner has that ability to look down at himself from 30,000 feet — or whatever the distance is from the press box at Rogers Place — and calmly assess the chaos that being a No. 1 goal on a Cup contender in a Canadian market entails.
He’ll tell you when he lets in a stinker, and if has to he’ll tell you when what looked like a bad goal really was not. He engages with the fans through the media, or just walking around the town he grew up in.
But in Stuart Skinner’s dream, he was going to own the town. It was never going to own him.
“No matter what the noise is that’s going on — no matter what other people are saying — my job is pretty simple: Stop the puck,” he said. “To be honest, I'm not here to listen to what the fans have to say about me, or what anybody has to say about me — except for the people that I trust. The people that are here to take care of me, to help me.”
Skinner drives to the airport oftentimes with defenceman Mattias Ekholm, and they sit next to each other on the Oilers’ charter. The young goalie is confident enough to call the shots on the car stereo over the veteran Swede, but smart enough to keep his ears open when a 775-game veteran wants to chat.
“We've had a lot of 30-minute talks on the way to the airport. We’ve sat together on the airplane for a while now,” Skinner said. “So he's been really big for me, just being able to talk to somebody.”
It was back in December when Tampa rolled through town and slapped the Oilers to the tune of 7-4. Skinner had a third period to forget, and afterwards he stood in front of his dressing room stall and admitted, “I ended up losing us the game.”
We’ve covered 35 years worth of goalies losing 35 years worth of hockey games in one form or another, and it’s not very often an NHL goalie — especially one this young — will step in front of the cameras and say what he said that night.
He owned that loss the way Connor McDavid owned the Philadelphia Flyers the other night.
“You wouldn't believe how hard that is,” marvelled Ekholm “Guys are proud. They always want to be the guy, but not (that) guy. I feel like he's very mature for his age. It took me a long time before I realized it's not that bad to just come out and say ‘Hey, I screwed up. It's my fault.’”
Said Skinner: “It comes with the territory of who I am, what I believe in. I think just being able to have some ownership of how things go is really important. I've cost a lot of games in my past. I've also been able to steal some games in my past.”
Goalies, as they say, are voodoo.
A season ago Skinner was a Calder Trophy candidate and an All-Star. A month ago, he was the reason many thought Ken Holland had to “Get off his rear end and find his team a goalie!”
Today, Skinner has his save percentage up to .895, his goals-against under three (2.83) and his 15 wins rank sixth in the NHL.
With each passing start, the level of backup goalie required in Edmonton is falling from John Gibson-level, to Peter Mrazek-level, to “maybe Calvin Pickard is good enough, and Holland can save those assets for a 3C?”
There’s been a lot packed into the dream of this Riverbend kid, who duelled Carter Hart all the way up and shared a hug outside the Flyers room after beating him 5-2 on Tuesday. He’s played just 90 NHL games, but making it through the start to this season that he and his team had, well, some of those games should count for more than just one.
“Stretches like that, they can either make a season really good or it can defeat you,” he admitted. “Through all of that, it's been helping us get closer as a team.”
And closer to realizing, maybe Stuart skinner IS enough goalie to get the job done here in Edmonton
To make the dream come true.
3:10
