Good morning, everyone, and a happy Monday to all of you. I’ve got a brand new mailbag ready to go after taking your questions and sending them to the crew for their take on whatever is on your mind. This week, we’re discussing Stuart Skinner’s rollercoaster start to the year, top six scoring, the Pacific Division, and much more. If you’ve got a question you’d like to ask, email it to me at baggedmilk@oilersnation.com or on Twitter at @jsbmbaggedmilk, and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.

The good news is they aren’t missing him. The concern is how the injury was supposedly going to be a few days and now he’s missed 11 games. The secrecy around the injury is rather odd.

More and more concerned after every update. The most I’ve thought about, I think they believed we would be back within a week and things have just progressed so poorly. I don’t think we’ll see him until after Christmas.

I’m worried about it. He was listed as day-to-day nearly a month ago, and it seems like every update we hear about him just gets worse.

I don’t know when that will be and who will be on the team or not. But if based on current players, I’d say J.Skinner, Henrique, Kapanen, Janmark, Brown and a new C. Perry will rotate in

Skinner – Henrique – Brown
Kapanen – Janmark – Perry

On the third line as he has always been someone who can produce 5×5. He had a bit of a funk from game 7-20, but I feel the past few weeks he is playing better and now has three points in his last two games.

The best spot for him is on a line where he can focus on scoring goals and making plays with the puck, and not where has to get the puck. I don’t think he works with McDavid or Draisaitl and that’s fine. Allow him to throw on that third line and give the Oilers more depth.

I wish he would get another look in the top-six to see if there’s any chemistry with either McDavid or Draisaitl, but it seems like Knoblauch doesn’t really trust him in one of those spots for whatever reason. Is he in the doghouse? Can he ever get out? Would we have been better off keeping Holloway instead? These are the things I’m thinking about.

Pronger for Brewer, Lynch, Woywitka. He only played one season in Edmonton, but they went to the Cup final.

I’ll go with the Patrick Maroon trade. The Oilers traded Martin Gernat and a 4th round pick for Maroon, who scored 41 goals over two seasons. What the Oilers eventually traded him away for was terrible but I’ll choose to ignore that and focus on the positive.

The Chris Pronger trade that brought him to Edmonton. That trade was a Kevin Lowe masterclass, and it’s a shame it didn’t work out because that deal was a monster win for the Oilers.

Goalies contracts haven’t gone up since Carey Price signed his deal in the summer of 2017. The cap was $75m in 2017/2018. Price made 14% of the cap, and Shesterkin’s contract is now 13% of the cap. Shesterkin will not live up to that contract. He might for the first few years, but not long term and considering he makes $3m more than Hellebuyck, starting next year, and he’s only two years younger, at best he will give them fair value, but most likely he will not put up numbers to match his salary.

My concern in paying elite goalies, is that if they don’t have great numbers, we always hear about the quality of shots they face and how the system doesn’t allow success. You never hear that about high-paid forwards. No one says, “McDavid finished 15^th in scoring because he didn’t have good wingers.”

I didn’t see a world in which the New York Rangers didn’t give him the bag. They pay everyone to stay in New York. Plus, you need to pay elite players and Igor Shesterkin is one of them. If the Oilers had Shesterkin and they didn’t pay him, I’d be pretty disappointed.

What other option did they have? He’s one of the best goalies in the NHL, and would have gotten that money one way or another. It’s a lot of dough for a goaltender, but Shesterkin put himself in a position to earn it.

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