Vitals
Player: Stuart Skinner
Born: Nov 1, 1998
Height: 6-feet 4 inches
Weight: 215 pounds
Hometown: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
Catches: Left
Draft: Third round pick (78th overall) in 2017 by the Edmonton Oilers
2025-26 Statistics: With Edmonton – 23 games (11-8-4 record, 2.83 GAA, .891 save%, 2 shutouts). With Pittsburgh – 27 games (12-9-5 record, 2.99 GAA, .885 save%)
Contract Status: Unrestricted free agent on July 1
Advertisement
Story of the Season
For the first time, a joint player review! It’s more like a ‘Penguin veteran goalie’ review day, which was Tristan Jarry when the season started. Jarry played well for the Pens at the beginning of the year (9-3-1 record, 2.66 GAA, .909 save%) only to see a shocking trade made seemingly out of nowhere on December 12th that sent him to Edmonton for Stuart Skinner, Brett Kulak and a 2029 second round pick.
In that moment, the future of the crease in Pittsburgh was changed. Skinner fit into Jarry’s place as part of the goalie rotation with Arturs Silovs, alternating in and out of the lineup almost every other game.
It turned out to be the perfect timing for the Pens to cut ties with Jarry and his onerous contract. The negative patterns of his career – namely injury and second-half decline – ended up repeating once again this season. Within three games of joining the Oilers, Jarry got hurt and was out for nearly a month. Once back, his play steadily regressed and he lost the position of being the Edmonton’s starting goalie by March. Jarry was only called on for one playoff game, where he took an overtime loss in Edmonton’s Game 4 against Anaheim.
Advertisement
On the other side of the equation, Skinner wasn’t tremendous but performed better statistically than Silovs for much of the season. That allowed Skinner to eventually nudge ever-so-slightly to the front of the line to earn being the Pens’ starting goalie at the beginning of the playoffs. Skinner performed fairly well against the Flyers in Games 1 and 2, allowing only five total goals – but his team wasn’t sharp and lost both games. Skinner was shakier in Game 3 where he gave a couple of questionable goals, and four total in another loss. At that point he was benched for the remainder of the series when the team gave Silovs a shot.
Monthly Splits
via Yahoo
Skinner was at his best for the Pens in January, providing some very sturdy play and winning seven of his eight starts. No other month was particularly impressive on paper, but considering the Pens finished three points ahead of ninth placed Washington in the standings an elevated January performance stands out as one of many factors that helped make Pittsburgh into a playoff team. Had Skinner had his fairly usual type of record, say a 4-3-2 January, that would have meant four less points in the standings. There’s no shortage of little variables that all combined to add up to a successful season for the team at large so that period for Skinner could be seen as just as important as anything else an individual contributed along the way (including going back to a 30 save on 31 shot night on 12/30 in a 5-1 win against Carolina that stands out as perhaps Skinner’s finest game as a Penguin).
Advertisement
Charts n’at
Via Advanced Hockey Stats and NHL Edge
The tale of the tape regarding GSAA for the two goalies traded for one another was just about the same until the Olympic break. Skinner ended up being pretty strong at +5.35 GSAA overall in 27 games as a Penguin and +9.05 GSAA on his entire season. Jarry, as tends to be his calling card, fell apart over the second half of the season. Jarry ended up with a -3.41 GSAA for his campaign, a tremendous fall from his +10.2 peak in late-January.
In the end, perhaps fittingly, the story ended the same for both goalies – they each watched from the bench as their respective teams lost in the first round of the playoffs.
Skinner’s advanced numbers might give him a little more credit than his reputation suggests. His save percentage wasn’t impressive but was better than the expectation (dashed blue line in the bottom right). Now with the benefit of time passing by, it’s easy to see he was miscast in Edmonton as a 50-60 game No. 1 starter role he filled from 2022-25. Hopefully on his next team he can slot in as a 1B or backup and he will have a chance to shine in the right situation. Some rumors already are out there that Ottawa may or should be interested in him, which might be a good spot. If I were his rep, I’d probably keep an eye out for what teams like Florida, Tampa and Winnipeg might be looking for as clubs that potentially seeking a secondary goalie option this summer.
As for Jarry, well, there’s no nice way to put it, his declining level of play combined with his contract is a massive issue for the Oilers moving forward. He was brought into be the solution and ended up making the situation even worse than it previously was. Whether it was physical, mental or some combination of both, the change of scenery did little to alter what’s become the downward slope of his career.
Skinner was slightly better than Silovs when it came to high danger save percentage (.775% for the Latvian), though neither were particularly good relative to the rest of the NHL goalies at large. All other things fairly equal, that slight advantage is a big reason on what helped to give Skinner the edge in being named the team’s No. 1 goalie at the start of the playoffs. (For his part, Jarry was pretty strong at high danger shots, stopping 82.5% of them. However, his mid-range and long-range numbers were absolutely atrocious and among the worst in the league.)
Advertisement
Highlights
Questions to ponder
There’s not a lot to question at this point, GM Kyle Dubas made it clear at the end of the season that his “full expectation” is that Sergei Murashov and Joel Blomqvist will be competing for an NHL roster spot next season. It doesn’t take a lot of reading between the lines to figure out that Skinner isn’t a part of Pittsburgh’s plans moving forward in order to open up that spot for a younger goalie to step into it.
Ideal 2026-27
In this instance, Dubas achieved an ideal outcome as far as juggling the Penguin veteran goalie situation. At the beginning of the season they had Jarry’s inconsistent play and $5.375 million annual cap hit on the books through 2027-28, they were able to drop that with no pain and create a clear runway for the Penguins to elevate Murashov into the NHL next season if he’s ready for it.
Advertisement
By making another move to flip Kulak as part of the Jarry return over to Colorado, Pittsburgh now has mined Sam Girard and two future second round picks for what was once Jarry at the start of the season. It’s difficult to imagine anything better than that coming into the year, considering the Pens had waived Jarry with no takers and had to assign him to the AHL in 2024-25. To turn that impediment into actual assets was an impressive feat.
As for Skinner, he should be alright to receive interest on the free agent makr and get to pick his own spot for next year to continue his career. With Jarry, the buzz seems to be that Edmonton will be bringing him back next year.
Bottom line
Jarry did well enough at the start to make Edmonton want to acquire him, Skinner’s play with the Pens was unremarkable but mostly fine splitting starts for the rest of the season. The Pens turn the page on their goalie situation and are primed for the future with new goalies that could perform better than what Jarry/Skinner have given them over the past couple years.
Advertisement
Pensburgh Grade: C on player performance, A+ for the managerial maneuvering behind it.
Read the full article here
