Skinner shelled as Oilers drop another pre-season game

Stuart Skinner wanted to get into the Oilers crease.

He hoped to face some NHL shots as the team jaunted two provinces east to Manitoba, squaring up with the Winnipeg Jets for the Oilers’ fourth pre-season game, and boy, did he, as the team fell 6-1.

The youthful group in front of him didn’t give much help, as four goals passed him on 27 shots. Nik Ehlers got the first past him as the Jets took advantage of a chaotic Oilers line change that left Skinner stranded. Kyle Connor scored the second, once again making the most of a broken play, beating the Oilers netminder on a breakaway.

Goals three and four, scored by Colin Miller and Neal Pionk, came with him screened on the power play and off another broken play, respectively. Skinner wasn’t at fault for any, and given the conclusion of the game marked the end of the first half of the pre-season, there was no need for him to physically or metaphorically break a leg to make any stops.

Collin Delia would enter for the third, allowing two goals on 10 shots.

“It was planned he was going to play the first two,” said Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch of Skinner. “Delia was going to play the third, but you’re right, he did make a lot of big saves in the first period, and often you see a goaltender let in four, and you’re thinking he had a bad night, especially after two periods, but that wasn’t the case at all. It was just the quality of chances they had.”

The game did mark a chance for the team to see what they had from a battle of potential fourth-line centres in Derek Ryan, James Hamblin, Noah Philp and Lane Pederson. Each centred their own line Wednesday, in a game where no one player rose above the rest.

Edmonton’s coaching staff, by and large, knows what they have in each player, to a certain extent, already.

Ryan has been a fourth-line, jack-of-all-trades mainstay for years, continuing to drive positive results for the club. Hamblin got some run last year with the team in the first half of last season, breaking near even at five-on-five while going on a PDO-heater, which saw the Oilers outscore the opposition 9-5 across 239 minutes and 31 games. He didn’t kill penalties last year, but has seen 1:55 of work in his two pre-season games.

Pederson could be considered the longest of shots to make the opening-day roster, but likely provides the most offensive upside and is two years removed from his most recent NHL game. Lastly, there’s Philp, who entered camp as a theoretical lock to start the year in the American Hockey League, and work his way back up to hopefully play minutes with the big club.

Instead, he’s been a shining light early, getting rewarded with his first points of the pre-season Wednesday. While he started the game on a line with Drake Caggiula and Matthew Savoie, struggling through the first two, he got some NHL vets on his wings in the third, playing with Mattias Janmark and Connor Brown, as the trio looked dominant, controlling 85.7 percent of the shot attempt share (6-1), and 85.9 percent of the expected goal share (0.19-0.03) in three and a half minutes of five-on-five play.

The biggest plus? They scored a five-on-five goal. Late in the third, Philp led the charge, turning a puck over down low and cycling it back to the point, where Noel Hoefenmayer took a shot that was tipped home by Brown.

“We had a little push in the third, which was nice,” said Knoblauch. “Scoring chances, one goal, but they’ve a much more veteran team, almost their nhl lineup, which is a good test for our guys. A lot of our guys that we feel are ready for the nhl and in a situation like that, you find out if you’re nhl ready or not. We liked a lot of our guys that showed up and played a strong game. Obviously there’s some guys you can tell that just aren’t quite ready. That’s a good indicator for us.”

The Oilers pre-season continues Saturday, with a 7 p.m. tune up against the Seattle Kraken at home.