Stuart Skinner thriving for Oilers after loss in Cup Final last season

EDMONTON -- Stuart Skinner admitted he needed to be honest with himself while dealing with the disappointment of losing in the Stanley Cup Final last season to properly focus on another run at a championship this season.

The Edmonton Oilers goalie is looking for redemption against the Florida Panthers in the Cup Final starting with Game 1 of the best-of-7 series at Rogers Place here on Wednesday (8 p.m. ET; CBC, TVAS, SN, TNT, truTV, MAX).

Edmonton lost 2-1 to Florida in Game 7 last season. Skinner, who took to journaling as a teenager to deal with the mental strain of goaltending, is looking to write a different script this time.

“I feel good as of now. I’ve just been preparing, doing my thing just like any of us, so it’s exciting,” Skinner said Tuesday during Stanley Cup Final media day. “If I’m going to be completely honest here, I thought I put it (disappointment) away quickly last year, but definitely internally there was something buried.

“That’s kind of the easy way to do it. Instead of thinking about it and trying to process it, I kind of stuffed it down a little bit. It kind of bit me in the butt halfway through my summer last year, and then I was able to look back at it and process it. Obviously, I didn’t want it to eat at me going into this season.”

Skinner feels he has grown and will look to take the lessons of a Cup Final loss into the rematch. He is 6-4 with a 2.53 goals-against average, .904 save percentage and three shutouts in 10 Stanley Cup Playoff games this season. Last season, he was 14-9 with a 2.45 GAA, .904 save percentage and one shutout in 23 playoff games.

The Edmonton native has been particularly strong since regaining the net in Game 3 of the Western Conference Second Round against the Vegas Golden Knights on May 10, going 6-2 with a 1.73 GAA, .931 save percentage with those three shutouts.

“It’s a different year. I feel completely different,” Skinner said. “I think everybody in our room feels different and you have to prepare for everything. There are so many things that can kind of happen.”

It has been an unconventional road back to the Final for Skinner. He struggled in the first two games of the first round against the Los Angeles Kings, allowing 11 goals on 58 shots (.810 save percentage) in those losses, and was replaced by Calvin Pickard, who helped Edmonton to four consecutive wins and the series victory.

Pickard then won the next two games against Vegas in the second round but sustained a lower-body injury in Game 2, opening the door for Skinner to return.

Skinner has been excellent in his past eight starts, including back-to-back shutouts to close out the Golden Knights in five games and another in Game 2 of the Western Conference Final against the Dallas Stars, a series the Oilers also won in five games.

“He’s had some ups and downs, and I think people focus more on the downs than the ups,” Oilers general manager Stan Bowman said Tuesday. “Our team started slow in October, but in early November until probably mid-January, he played really well.

“Our team was on a roll, and you see what he can do when he comes into the last couple of rounds here. He started in L.A. and our team wasn’t very good in the first couple of games either. We didn’t give him much help and he wasn’t on top of his game either, but he was able to shrug that off and he came back in, and we wouldn’t be here without him and the way he’s played.”

Skinner’s entire season was indicative of what Edmonton went through trying to get back into a position to win the Stanley Cup.

The Oilers lost their first three games of the season and were 2-4-1 through their first seven. Skinner was 3-5-1 with a 3.28 GAA and .885 save percentage in his first nine starts, finishing at 26-18-4 with a 2.81 GAA and .896 save percentage in 51 games (50 starts).

Coming back from the 4 Nations Face-Off, which was held from Feb. 12-20, the Oilers lost five of their first six games out of the break. They eventually dropped to third in the Pacific Division, where they finished the season, after sharing the lead with the Golden Knights going into the tournament.

Injuries also became a concern, with Skinner missing eight games because of a head injury sustained in 4-3 loss against the Stars on March 26. Forwards Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Zach Hyman, and defensemen Mattias Ekholm, John Klingberg, Jake Walman and Troy Stecher also missed games because of injury toward the end of the season, and forward Evander Kane missed the entire regular season. He had surgery to repair two torn hip adductor muscles, two hernias and two torn lower abdominal muscles in September and also had knee surgery Jan. 9.

Through all the adversity, however, Skinner attempted to keep a level head, which resonated throughout the rest of the team.

“I think Stuart he has a good demeanor for a goalie,” Bowman said. “He’s pretty easygoing guy and it’s probably the toughest position in sports with the attention they get. You look up and down the lineup, everyone makes mistakes -- forwards do, defensemen do -- and when the goalie does, everyone pays attention.

“A lot of times a forward will make a terrible play, and you don’t even talk about it because it’s broken up by a defenseman or the goalie makes a save. I think you have to have that ability to shrug things off, and he’s a very even-keel guy.”

Skinner’s relaxed approach makes him popular in the Edmonton locker room, and his teammates appreciate his ability to bounce back.

It has not always been as easy as Skinner makes it look, though.

Giving up the winning goal to Florida forward Sam Reinhart at 15:11 of the second period in Game 7 last season, on a short-side shot from the right face-off circle, proved tougher to get over than Skinner initially anticipated.

“I stuffed it down and I’m normally pretty good with that stuff,” Skinner said. “I normally open up the wound pretty quickly, but it took me a little while last summer, and who really helped me with that was my wife. I was like, ‘I’m totally fine,’ and she was like, ‘I don’t think you are,’ and she really helped me in that moment and that’s what family is all about, making sure you’re OK and taking care of you. That opened up the wound and I was able to process it and take care of it, and now it’s in the past.”

Losing in the Final is just another hurdle the Oilers feel they have to overcome to attain their ultimate goal of winning the Stanley Cup. There were doubts Skinner and the Oilers would be able to put everything together to get back to this point this season, but here they are, with home-ice advantage to boot.

“That’s just a credit to our perseverance,” Skinner said. “It’s kind of the story of the Oilers; you get knocked down, you just keep on getting right back up. You’ve seen that in all the playoffs this year as individuals as a team. It’s just the way we keep on moving forward. We lose the Cup last year and we’re back here again being able to get that opportunity, and that’s nothing but complete excitement.”