Though they aren’t a new tandem, this will be the first time the Oilers go into a season with Stuart Skinner as their starting goaltender and Calvin Pickard as his backup.
After three seasons of primarily Mike Smith and Mikko Koskinen between the pipes, the Oilers signed Jack Campbell to a five-year, $25 million free-agent contract in the summer of 2022, expecting him to be their starting goaltender. He posted an .888 save percentage in his first season in Edmonton and quickly lost the net to Skinner, who put up a .913 save percentage in his first full season in the NHL.
Campbell had a strong showing in the pre-season last year and was again Edmonton’s starting goaltender when they opened 2023-24. He was waived after five starts and spent the rest of the season in the American Hockey League. Meanwhile, Pickard came up from the Bakersfield Condors and impressed with a .909 save percentage over 23 games as Skinner’s backup.
There was plenty of speculation that the Oilers would add a more seasoned backup goalie ahead of last season’s trade deadline, but they showed confidence in Pickard. He rewarded them with a solid relief performance during their second-round playoff series with the Vancouver Canucks. While Skinner was dealing with an illness, Pickard stopped 51 of 56 shots between Games 2 and 3.
The Oilers inked Pickard to a two-year contract worth $1 million annually in the summer, a nice raise from his previous contract that saw him make $750k while in the NHL and $300k while in the AHL.
“It’s exciting. I didn’t want to be anywhere else,” Pickard told Jim Matheson of The Edmonton Journal earlier this week. “With a tandem you want a good relationship obviously and we’re a good support system for each other. We’re really good friends.”“You never want to take a day for granted. Coming up (minors) and fighting for my life every single day, that’s what I do. Nothing changes even with a two-year contract. My mindset never changes. I always have to prove myself.”
Goaltending has been a rollercoaster ride in Edmonton for many years, but the tandem of Stuart Skinner and Calvin Pickard got the team to just one win away from the Stanley Cup in the spring. Given that run, goaltending doesn’t appear to be the weakness it once was for the Oilers. Matt Larkin of Daily Faceoff ranked the tandem 17th in the league heading into 2024-25, which is a step up from previous years.
“I wouldn’t call myself the world’s biggest Skinner Stan. Save percentages by month last year: .863, .888, .915, .953, .887, .917, .893. By playoff round: .910, .833, .922, 909. The human roulette wheel may be the game’s least consistent starting goalie. That said: he was still good enough, most of the time, to help Edmonton reach Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Final. When he’s on his game, he’s quite good. Pickard was also pretty solid behind him last season, going 12-7-1 with a .909 SV%. So while I don’t consider goaltending a feature for Edmonton, it’s not a bug, either. It can’t be if it was good enough to get you within one victory of a championship.”
The top tandem on the list is Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov, who have managed to help some mediocre New York Islanders teams make the playoffs in the past couple of years. The defending Stanley Cup Champions, the Florida Panthers, come in at tenth with a three-way goalie group of Sergei Bobrovsky, Spencer Knight, and Chris Driedger.
