The preseason battle for the Oilers' crease is a misguided exercise

The Edmonton Oilers seem to be trying to decide on a top goaltender with seven days and just two preseason games left until their regular-season opener.

Head coach Jay Woodcroft called the battle for the Game 1 start an "open competition" on Tuesday, which is not a good sign for a team with Stanley Cup aspirations.

Although there's nothing sacred about being in between the pipes for the opener — and the situation in the crease could easily evolve as the season progresses — there are a few concerning components to Edmonton's current predicament.

The first is that Stuart Skinner, a guy the team signed to a three-year extension less than a year ago, hasn't been able to distance himself from Jack Campbell, who's coming off an abysmal season, in Edmonton's eyes.

There's no doubt that Skinner struggled in his first taste of postseason action with a .883 save percentage, but 12 games is a small sample — and that performance was approximately in line with Campbell's regular-season numbers.

It's also true that the veteran was a solid starter as recently as 2021-22. The fact he's signed to an immovable contract with a $5 million AAV through 2026-27 also incentivizes the team to not give up on him easily.

Even so, Campbell has only started more than half of his team's games once in his career. While he's generally been solid when he plays, it's not as if he has an incredible resume that instills faith that last season was a complete fluke. Having him enter 2023-24 as a definitive backup — or at least 1B — would have been logical based on his 2022-23 performance.

Part of what makes this an odd look for the Oilers is that they seem to be taking preseason work seriously as an evaluation tool for their netminders. Campbell has much been stronger than Skinner so far with a .971 save percentage to the 24-year-old's .888.

The problem is that each has played the equivalent of two full games. It's totally normal for an NHL goalie to look unbelievable or useless in a sample that small.

For instance, in Campbell's final two games of the 2022-23 regular season he had a .984 save percentage. In his eight appearances before those stellar outings that number sat at .859. Similarly, Skinner seemed to be slowing down in mid-March with a four-game stretch that saw him post a .864 save percentage, but that number climbed to .966 in his final five appearances.

Goaltending is a volatile business that's about consistency rather than peak performance. For a short period of time, anyone can look like a hero or a dud.

There are more subtleties to playing the position than success saving pucks can capture, and perhaps Campbell has really impressed the coaching staff with how he's achieved his strong results. Skinner's rookie season was also strong, but not unimpeachable.

It's within the realm of possibility that Campbell will be Edmonton's best goaltending this season.

But describing the situation as an open competition seems to be putting an undue amount of emphasis on preseason performances — and probably not enough in what Skinner accomplished in his first full NHL campaign.

It's worth remembering that the top goaltenders in the preseason are not always the best guys when the games begin to matter. Below is a list of the top 10 netminders by preseason GSAA from 2020-21 to 2022-23, and how they fared in the regular season by the same metric:

That's a mixed bag to say the least, and a good demonstration of how difficult it is to evaluate goaltenders — a tall task at the best of times — based on exhibition play.

If the Oilers think that Campbell is capable of a bounce-back season that sees him become their top dog between the pipes based on his track record that's a justifiable, if optimistic, view. If they believe that he deserves to be in a fight with Skinner because of his performance against less than 100 preseason shots, that's poor process.