Good morning, everyone, and a happy Thanksgiving Monday to all of you. As always, I’ve got a fresh 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 the season opener debacle, dead cap space, Stuart Skinner expectations, and 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.

Nothing really. The two games were 360+ days apart. Nothing connects them, other than they played poorly. Team just needs to be better.

I’m not that worried about it. We’ve also seen them get off to strong starts in the McDavid era. I’m not reading into it this at all.

The trend means nothing to me. There’s going to be games you get blown out, and unfortunately for the Oilers, it’s been the last two season openers.

As much as the season opener was annoying, we’ve seen the team recover from slow starts before. I’m not worried about them at all. At least, not yet.

Starting 0-3 is awful. So realistically now if they are 5-6 it would deemed decent. It will be hard for them to have a great record at the end of the month.

I think they can go 7-3-1 and that would be solid. There are some pretty easy spots on the schedule, including their next few games here, so they should be able to go on a little run at some point here.

At the worst, the Oilers should finish 6-3-1. I could see them slipping up during that back-to-back in Detroit and Columbus.

Looking at the schedule and the opponents they’ll face, I think something along the lines of 7-3-1 or 6-3-2 would be the only record I’d be happy with. That obviously gets way harder now that they’ve lost the first three.

Same as last season. I outlined last week how Skinner was very good under Knoblauch.

Skinner ranked first in wins with 34. He was eighth in Sv% at .912. Markstrom, Thatcher Demko and Linus Ullmark were tied for fifth at .913Sv%. Bobrovsky was second at .917sv%. Skinner was fifth in GAA at 2.46. He also was 7th in save percentage differential courtesy of Clear Sight Analytics.

He has the ability to be in the top-10 in those categories again this season. He needs to play up to his potential just like the entire team who are all struggling at this point.

I think if he can play 55+ games and have a save percentage somewhere around .910 then Oilers fans should be thrilled. I think his ceiling is even higher than that, but I think .910 is a solid bar to set for a guy heading into his third NHL season.

If he plays between 52 to 56 games and finishes with a 0.905SV% or higher that’d be solid. I think Skinner is a great goaltender but, with the Oilers blueline, there’s going to be nights his numbers won’t look good. 905 is a good target and around league average.

I’m going to say he gets 50+ starts and finishes with a .914 save%. If he can do that, I think a lot of people change their tune on how good Stuart Skinner can be.

It isn’t ideal, no doubt. Kane’s LTIR money will either be used to acquire a player before the deadline, or he will return for the playoffs. I see your point about not using it now, and we’ll see if that strategy pays off as they try to accrue more cap space.

Yes. Plenty of teams are also dealing with dead money and the Oilers are a contender because they have Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. Past management groups have made some mistakes, that’s obvious, but it’s on this current group to find value deals and keep the roster competitive even with the dead money and they’ve done that.

It’s definitely not good but they’re also underpaying Evan Bouchard, Jeff Skinner and Stuart Skinner so it balances out. Plus, last season they had the dead money from Milan Lucic, James Neal and Jack Campbell and still lost in Game 7 of the Cup Final.

It’s not ideal to have this much dead cap space, but it’s certainly not a unique problem the Oilers are facing. That said, it’s hard to look at that number and not shake your head.

Favourite it pumpkin pie with real whip cream. None of that canned, processed garbage.

I would ban stuffing. I’ve never liked it.

I love stuffing. I love mashed potatoes. I love a good piece of dark meat. I hate cranberry sauce.

I stand with every item on the Thanksgiving table because I am thankful. 😉

I’m all about the stuffing, potatoes, and turkey. My family’s Thanksgiving dinner is actually happening tonight and I couldn’t be more excited about it. That said, get the brussel sprouts away from me.

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