What a week it’s been for the Edmonton Oilers.

They pulled the trigger on trading Stuart Skinner for Tristan Jarry, had big wins against Toronto, Pittsburgh and Boston. They’ll head back to Edmonton for games against Vegas and the Flames before Christmas.

Before we get to this weeks questions, let’s break down the big trade.

Well, first off, obviously huge news this past week with Stuart Skinner off to Pittsburgh and Kulak as well. Tristan Jarry coming back. There’s been a lot of talk about the trade. I’m kind of in the same boat as the initial feeling of everybody was. Was it an upgrade? I don’t know.

That’s nothing against Tristan Jarry. It’s certainly not a downgrade by any means. If you want to look at the advanced stats. Tristan Jarry is an upgrade, but I think there’s a chunk of the season here that Skinner was starting to play better.

So I think more than anything, we’ve gotten to this point that something needed to happen. Now, I would have loved to see a Tristan Jarry and Stuart Skinner goalie partnership. I don’t think that was necessarily realistic with the cap space, but that’s kind of something that I more had in mind as a good option for Edmonton rather than, to me, the kind of back in the same situation that they were with Skinner, other than you have a fresh face and a fresh mind who hasn’t gone through what Skinner has gone through here and the constant talk of the trades and all that.

But you’re still in that same situation where if Jarry struggles — and this is nothing against Pickard, I love Pickard. I’ll say it over and over: he’s a great teammate, and he works hard, and he does his job as backup. But in the situation that the Oilers are in, if he’s not playing well or you can’t play him every night and Jarry starts to struggle, you’re in the exact same situation you were before the trade with Skinner, where now you’re in a situation where all the pressure’s on Jarry. You’re forced to play him because you have to, and there’s not really a solution from what they were, the situation they were in before.

So, interesting move. I guess a move had to be made. I’ll wait and see if they’re done with it. But on top of all that, we got one of the stranger situations where they played each other, almost immediately. I was trying to figure out, trying to feel what it would feel like for these two guys.

And I’ve been through my trades. When I came back to Edmonton with Nashville, it was definitely strange, but I wasn’t playing the game and it wasn’t right away. It was pretty quick, but that was weird enough coming back into the building and playing against those guys. And this is both of these players’ first trades, so they haven’t been in another organization.

And then Stuart Skinner has got to hop in there against the only guys he’s ever played with. Gone to two Stanley Cup Finals with and scored on the first goal he gives up is Leon Draisaitl’s 1,000th point and he’s in every single picture of Leon and the entire team celebrating his 1,000 points.

So just an insane amount of emotions going on, I’m sure for both of those guys last night and again, Jarry going back to Pittsburgh, weird for Skinner to be playing against Edmonton, probably just as weird or more weird for Tristan Jarry to be playing against his former team, but also back in his old building where he spent his entire career.

As far as the Cogliano trade goes, I don’t really know. He got traded in the summer for a second-round pick. He was a guy that I was close with that I had known for a long time. So that was a little strange. It always sucks when people like that get traded, but with it being in the summer, it wasn’t quite as crazy as an in-season trade. So I don’t remember too much about it.

As far as being rushed by the Oilers. No, I mean, I spent my time, I went through the whole system. I played my first year in the East Coast League, and then two and a half years in the American League, and then my last year, that half year was up and down with Edmonton and I feel fortunate. During the time it was tough, going up and down, not really starting games, just backing up games, and I struggled when I did start.

Then towards the end of the season, because we were so far out of it, and we had me and Deslauries there, they just told us we were going to alternate games through the end of the year, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about when it’s the NHL, and they’re going to put us in a situation where we’re just going to go every other game, no matter what happens.

But I think I needed that, and it was able to give me a chance to just get into some sort of routine and really learn how I needed to play and what I needed to do to be able to be successful in the NHL. And it kind of set me up for the following year to be there full-time.

I didn’t even have a call-up until that year. I didn’t even have one close, no sitting on the bench, no one was ever hurt. Before that, before Deslauries was full-time on the team, he was the only guy who had got called up. So I definitely spent my time in the minors and fortunate to have that time in Edmonton as well, to really develop when in a normal season, I don’t think guys are necessarily going to get that as big of a leash as I did to find my game.

And so, definitely feel grateful for that, that I was able to get there. And I think the last six games of the year that year, I went 4-2 and kind of solidified my spot for the next season. So, there was no push too quickly by Edmonton by any means for sure.

I think just the way the world’s gone, I think there’s probably more forms of communication, more information out there. But as far as when I was there, not a lot of communication. You like to think that they’re right there, that they’re seeing every game and it’s easier to watch every game now, so maybe teams pay more attention. I don’t know.

But once you make it to the top and you make it to the NHL and you kind of look back, and nobody really knows what’s going on down there, who’s having a good season?.Now, I would say that the management does and they have people who that’s their job, so they obviously know what’s going on. But as far as the team and stuff, you realize you’re kind of far away down there, and there’s only a few guys who are kind of slotted to get called up. But when you’re down there, and you’re playing, you don’t really know.

There wasn’t a whole ton of communication when I was in Edmonton. Pete Peeters would come in as the goalie coach. He’d come down once a month, and I talked with him, and I talked with him at some other times, too.

When I went to Montreal, I got traded and had already cleared waivers. So I spoke with them and they said I hadn’t played in a while in Nashville, so they said “you’re going to go down to Hamilton for the weekend, play all three games and, or play 2 or 3, and then we’ll call you on Monday.” They didn’t say “we’ll call you up on Monday,” they said “we’ll call you on Monday.”

I went to Hamilton, played the games, and never heard from anybody in the organization again until the year was over.

I’m not going to pick one. I’ll just go with a few that I really like. We’ll go back to getting drafted was a huge day.

If I had to pick one from the Oilers, my first win. I think it was my 11th start, and I just could not buy a win. We’re playing the Detroit Red Wings, obviously a great team. They still had Lidstrom and Zetterberg and Datsyuk, and the list goes on of the guys that were still there on that Detroit team. We were winning 2-1 with about 10 seconds left in the game, and my buddy Theo Peckham decided that he was going to lay on the puck in the corner, and that’s how he was going to kill 10 seconds.

But he forgot all of those aforementioned players can find the puck and get it out, which they obviously did. And I think it was either Zetterberg or Datsyuk, hit Brian Rafalski back door with 0.3 seconds left in the game. The green light was on. It was so close that they had to go to video to show that it crossed the line.

Games tied,  instantly I’m thinking another loss. We’re going to go to start number 12. But I tried to keep that out of my head. We got through overtime and I was able to stop Valtteri Filppula and on the third shot in the shootout to get the win. So that first win not only is the first win, but it was really tough to get. It was a very big highlight of my career.

Going down the list, I think if I looked at the year getting awarded the Bill Masterton Trophy and getting nominated for the Vezina was a very exciting part of my career. Not just for those things, but just kind of the 365 days leading up to that. I went from the previous summer coming off of the worst year of my life, getting one single one-way contract offered to me from the Arizona Coyotes. One year, almost minimum, and 365 days later, I was at the NHL Awards, nominated for the Vezina and getting a Masterton award, which is kind of awarded for that perseverance, just kind of capped it all off.

And then I get my six-year deal with Minnesota. So that was obviously probably the most proud moment of my career. Just to have gone through what I went through and to get back to where I was at and then also be recognized for it at the NHL Awards was pretty exciting.