Stuart Skinner has given up exactly 100 playoff goals over the last two seasons. That’s a lot.
Dan Vladar has played exactly 48 minutes, 38 seconds of playoff hockey in his NHL career. That’s not much.
Goaltending is always an unpredictable variable in the Stanley Cup playoffs, but there’s a good chance it could be all over the map in the upcoming first-round series between the Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers.
Both presumed starting goalies could get hot.
Skinner, after all, has backstopped the Edmonton Oilers to the last two Stanley Cup finals, and that doesn’t happen without big saves at key times.
Vladar, meanwhile, is in the midst of a career year with the Flyers. His advanced stats are even better than his decent .906 save percentage. He even earned team MVP honors.
Both presumed starters, of course, could also run ice cold.
Skinner hasn’t been in his best form lately, going 3-4-1 with an .873 save percentage in the last month.
Before this season, Vladar was carving out a nondescript career as a backup with the Calgary Flames. When he signed a two-year, $6.7 million deal last summer, many thought the Flyers overpaid.
See? The possibilities are endless.
Here’s a closer look at some goaltending storylines in the series.
1. Skinner’s struggles
Let’s not sugarcoat things. Statistically speaking, Skinner is one of the worst playoff goalies in NHL history.
Among goalies who have played in at least 20 playoff games since the 2004-05 lockout, Skinner’s .893 save percentage ranks dead last.
In the history of the league, among goalies who have played in at least 50 career playoff games, Skinner’s numbers are eighth-worst.
Two interesting nuggets about those stats:
• The list of goalies with worse playoff save percentages than Skinner overlaps quite a bit with the list of goalies who gave up the most career goals to Mario Lemieux. Pete Peeters, Don Beaupre, Mike Liut and Kelly Hrudey are on both.
Coincidence? I think not. Nothing worse for a goaltender’s save percentage than Lemieux on a breakaway.
• It’s entirely possible that Skinner’s poor playoff numbers are really not his fault. Edmonton’s defense over the past couple of seasons might have been historically bad.
Look at last year’s playoffs as an example. In 15 games, Skinner gave up 44 goals. According to money puck.com’s advanced stats, the Oilers would have been expected to give up 43.99 goals in those games.
The 2024 playoffs were more of the same — 56 goals allowed compared to 57.9 expected goals.
In other words, Skinner didn’t hide Edmonton’s shortcomings, but he didn’t exacerbate them either.
2. Naming a starter
Coach Dan Muse has alternated goalies pretty religiously this season, so it is a bit presumptuous to anoint Skinner as the team’s unquestioned No. 1 heading into the playoffs.
Still, Skinner has earned nine starts to Silovs’ six in the past month, so it’s clearly trending in that direction.
If the Penguins do turn to Silovs at some point, they’d be counting on the young Latvian recapturing some of his playoff magic from a season ago in the AHL.
He went 16-7 with a .931 save percentage to lead Abbotsford to the Calder Cup, winning playoff MVP honors.
They’d hope he could shake off his recent poor form. In the past month, only three NHL goalies have a worse save percentage than Silovs’ .854, and one of them is Tristan Jarry (.844).
3. Plan C
If Silovs stumbles and the Penguins turn to prospect Sergei Murashov, it would be a Hail Mary, but hardly an unprecedented move.
Murashov has played in five NHL regular-season games. When Matt Murray made his playoff debut in 2016 — everyone remembers how that turned out — he had played in only 13 NHL games.
4. Two-headed monsters
If the Penguins end up using multiple goalies, would that mean they have no chance to go on any kind of significant playoff run?
Not really.
There was a long stretch where using a goalie tandem in the playoffs was taboo.
From 1972, when Eddie Johnston and Gerry Cheevers split starts evenly en route to a Stanley Cup for the Boston Bruins until the covid pandemic, you’d have to look long and hard to find a truly successful playoff run that included two goaltenders (without an injury to one of them).
But in 2022, Colorado used healthy doses of both Pavel Francouz and Darcy Keumper en route to a title. The next year, Vegas leaned on both Adin Hill and Laurent Brossoit at times.
Teams have been more willing to split starts among goaltenders in recent years in both the regular season and playoffs, so it stands to reason that a tandem approach would eventually end up in the winner’s circle.
5. Goaltending downturn
Skinner has an .885 save percentage since joining the Penguins via a trade with the Oilers on Dec. 12, and while that sounds bad, here’s something to keep in mind.
Leaguewide save percentage has been steadily falling since 2016, and it’s reached a staggering low this season. The average save percentage was around .896, the first time that figure has been under .900 since 1995-96.
Here’s the biggest reason for the drop: Improvements in NHL tracking technology have reduced the number of plays that are considered shots on goal.
In the old days, if a puck was thrown near the net, it was recorded by humans as a shot on goal, and that was that. Now, plays can be reviewed and technology can help ascertain if a puck from the point was actually going to fly a few inches wide, which means it wouldn’t be recorded as a shot.
It seems insignificant, unless you had Anthony Mantha under 3½ shots as part of your six-leg Draft Kings parlay.