You might call me the Edmonton Oilers’ unlikeliest fan. I’ve never been to Edmonton (or even Alberta), until recently I knew almost nothing about hockey, and I can barely even skate.
But then I moved in with an Oilers fan, the pandemic shut everything down again (plus it was winter), and the hockey was on, so, well, I watched. As my roommate patiently explained to me first the basics and then the finer points of the game, the NHL, and the history of the franchise, I became hooked. I memorized which numbers went with which names and became absorbed in the personalities and the dramas. I was sad the following season when trades had been made and some of the characters had left the show (to me, in those early days, it was more like a sitcom than real life) and there were new ones to learn all over again.
Two of the personalities I got to know, of course, were the goalies: Mikko Koskinen, who had me holding my breath until at least one shot had been blocked, and Mike Smith, whose aggressive goaltending style was as thrilling to watch as it was anxiety inducing. I still miss him sometimes.
And then along came Stuart Skinner, a fresh-faced, homegrown, unknown entity. “Young Stuart Skinner,” as the announcers liked to call him in a paternalistic way, as though reminding us that at 22, he was only a hatchling and not yet fully fledged. He’s only just had his training wheels taken off, so you’ll forgive him if he makes any gaffes.
And he made himself memorable almost immediately. In his second ever NHL appearance, he came nonchalantly out of the goal to play the puck against the boards – a very normal and usually uncomplicated thing for a goalie to do. But he miscalculated, and instead of ricocheting along the boards to one of his own defensemen, the puck boomeranged right back, zipping past him to the front of the goal where it was pounced on by a player of the opposing team and tapped into the wide open net.
It was the gaffe to end all gaffes.
“Uh oh,” I said. “This is where Koskinen would fall apart.”
But we had no idea what Skinner would do.
It would have been completely human and entirely understandable if his game had collapsed at that moment. But it didn’t, and we were impressed. Here was a goalie with mental resilience.
And boy, did the Oilers need someone like that.
If you follow hockey, you might know that Skinner came back for the 2022-23 season to join the Oilers roster fulltime, first as backup goalie and then moving up to the starting position. That’s a heavy responsibility for a rookie, but Skinner has carried it well. He’s been a rock.
I was already a fan of Skinner (who wouldn’t be?), but then something happened the other week that made me really sit up and take notice.
So let’s set the scene: It’s game 6 of round 1 in the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The Oilers are up 3-2 in the series against the LA Kings. If they win this game, they go to round 2. If they lose, it’s back to Edmonton for game 7. At the start of the third period, the Oilers are up by a single goal. With a little over 13 minutes left in the game, the Oilers go on the power play. The puck is cleared by the Kings and slides all the way down the ice to Skinner, who gets ready for a simple pass to Oilers defenseman Evan Bouchard. But he fans on the pass, and an opportunistic Phillip Danault is perfectly placed to capitalize on the mistake. And the game is tied. In LA. With the fans going crazy.
That’s what it looked like to the fans. That’s what it looked like to the announcers. That’s what it looked like to everyone on the ice and on the bench. That’s what it looked like to thousands of people watching from home.
Only Stuart Skinner knew that it wasn’t his fault. Only he knew that it was his broken stick that caused the error. (Although, granted, in the moments after the goal, the coaches and the team must have learned the truth of the matter, not least because their goalie would have needed a new stick.)
Imagine for a moment how you would react.
Not, of course, that any of us can really imagine what it must be like to be a rookie goalie in the Stanley Cup Playoffs letting in the tying goal in the third period of game 6. But I’m sure most of us have some experience of the burden of other people’s expectations and of being blamed for something that really wasn’t our fault.
And then there are the voices in our own heads, those voices of self-doubt, wondering and imagining how other people view us and what they must be thinking – even though, deep down, we know that they probably aren’t thinking about us at all.
And I’m sure we all know people who can’t bear to be seen as anything other than perfect, people who take themselves too seriously, who blame others for their own mistakes.
Not Stuart Skinner.
Asked after the game how he recovered from that moment, Skinner responded, “Honestly, my first thought was, ‘I like it the hard way. I want to win the hard way.’” And then he moved on so that he could make the next few saves and let his teammates know that it was going to be ok.
You can tell a lot about a person by some of the nuances in their conversation. And watching this interview, I noticed that Stuart Skinner redirects the focus to the team. “That stuff happens. It’s about how you bounce back from that. It’s about how you respond to moments like that. I thought we did a great job in how we responded.”
Not about how he responded individually, but about how they collectively, as a team, overcame that difficult moment. He wasn’t interpreting the moment in terms of himself and his career but in terms of the team and what they were trying to achieve. That says something about a person.
But unlike Skinner himself, I do want to focus on his personal resilience and his show of maturity and character. Because although the winning goal came from Kailer Yamamoto and was made possible by the efforts of the entire team, a goalie unable to bounce back could still have lost them the game – especially in an arena as competitive as the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
I admit I didn’t see it all happen live. It was all just too late for me – one of the downsides to supporting a Mountain Time team from the Eastern Time Zone. I found out about it all the next morning as I watched the post-game analysis. And my very first thought was, “I wish I could be more like Stuart Skinner.”
“That stuff happens. It’s about how you bounce back from that. It’s about how you respond to moments like that.” Not just in hockey but in life.
One of the big lessons I’ve learned in life is that there is very little that is actually under your control. You may think you are in control, but that’s really just an illusion. And the sooner you recognize that, the less stressful your life will be and the better you will react to adversity.
I know people who go through life with a smile and a positive attitude, not because they’ve encountered no obstacles, but because they treat those obstacles, those challenges, those low points, as an inevitable part of life – even as part of the adventure. They are genuinely happy because of the way they respond to whatever life throws at them.
I also know people who go through life insisting that the world owes them, that God owes them, more than what they have, that somehow they deserve more. And they may have experienced real injustices – because let’s face it, people can be horrible to one another – but they let those experiences dominate their lives. They are bitter and resentful. If you will forgive the metaphor, but I do think it is apt: they cannot move on from the broken stick.
I know nothing about Stuart Skinner apart from what I see on TV, but what the TV shows me is an affable, professional young man (he’s only 24) who performs well under immense pressure, who doesn’t take himself too seriously, who shows great appreciation for his teammates, and who treats difficult experiences as valuable learning opportunities.
He recently told Sportsnet’s Gene Principe that he has kept the broken stick from Game 6 against the LA Kings and will be hanging it up in his basement “as a reminder that it doesn’t come easy, that you gotta persevere, and you’re not always going to get the bounces that you want, and it’s just about loving that moment and being able to bounce back and how you respond to it.”
I don’t know about you, but I, for one, am going to try in my daily life to be a little bit more like Stuart Skinner.