GENE'S BLOG: Klutch Koskinen

It was a weekend full of NFL playoff games and watching quarterbacks, linemen, linebackers, defensive backs and everyone else on the field battle it out for the right to move on. With so much on the line, it seemed like almost every game came down to one player pushing his team onward and forward towards the Super Bowl in a few weeks' time.
Rosters of 60-plus players and in the end the game was attached to the shoulders of a field goal kicker. Often the smallest players on the field with the biggest job ahead of them. Make it and you're the hero. Miss it and you feel like a zero. The ultimate pressure point in being a success. Every sport has its positions that bring the pressure to perform.
He is not the smallest player on the team -- rather the tallest -- but Mikko Koskinen came up with his version of a game-winning field goal thanks to a game-winning save in the third period of Saturday's game. It pushed his team to a victory in the Battle of Alberta. As a fan, you judge netminders on their save percentage, their goals-against average, and of course their wins and losses.
It's a results-driven business, but I think we sometimes forget there is a person behind the mask. A son, a husband, a father, and from where I stand, a darn good guy trying his best to be at his best for his teammates. Being a goalie on any team and in any league is tough. Doing it in a city with a rabid fan base who love their Oilers can be challenging.

The entire season has been a challenge in the Oilers crease. The plan was a 60/40 split or something close to that between Mike Smith and Koskinen. Stuart Skinner would likely spend one more season in the minors with the Bakersfield Condors before graduating full time into the NHL.
Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case with Smith being injured and Skinner being pressed into service. Instead, there stood the 6-foot-7 Finnish netminder doing his best game after game. While trying to get his team on the winning track, I think Koskinen faced more shots on social media than he did Saturday night when he made 44 saves on 47 pucks in a 5-3 win over Calgary.
This was Koskinen post-game: "Sometimes it is tough. You open up the Internet and it's in your face. It's tough not to see it but usually I try to block everything out. It's not my business, not my opinion."
In fact, it also wasn't Leon Draisaitl's opinion as he sat at the podium beside the goaltender on Saturday. Instead, the game-winning goal-scoring hero spoke of how the team loves Koskinen. A testimonial that would go a long way in letting all of us on the outside understand what's happening on the inside.

Koskinen is a stand-up netminder and a stand-up guy. He spoke openly of the challenges he faced last season without his family with him in Edmonton. When his hockey family needed him most on Saturday night, he came through in the clutch, and they did the same for the goaltender.
"I feel like the boys are all behind me," Koskinen said after the win over Calgary. "That's all that matters. I have to thank my teammates for standing with me. The team is the most important.
"The people who have been saying that we are not a good team and calling us bad or whatever, they are not in our room. So that doesn't matter. We have to believe in our room and ourselves. We proved that we can do it."
It may have been only one win, but the Oilers got big performances from their star players as they halted their losing skid. A return to success on the power play and an outstanding effort in net to name a few things that went right at Rogers Place.