EDMONTON -- Grant Fuhr held the Edmonton Oilers record for most consecutive wins by a goalie for nearly 38 years, but the Hockey Hall of Famer watched it fall Tuesday when Stuart Skinner won his 11th straight game in a 4-1 victory against the Columbus Blue Jackets.
“I think it’s awesome,” Fuhr, a five-time Stanley Cup winner with the Oilers, said Wednesday. “No. 1, he’s a great kid, and No. 2, he’s played phenomenal.”
Skinner made 27 saves in the win against Columbus and kept the game tied 1-1 through the first two periods before the Oilers scored three goals in the third. The triumph extended Edmonton’s winning streak to a team-record 14 games with the Chicago Blackhawks up next at Rogers Place on Thursday (9 p.m. ET; TVAS, SN1, NBCSCH).
Skinner also claimed a mark that has stood since Fuhr won 10 consecutive games for the Oilers from Feb. 14-March 25, 1986.
The 25-year-old has taken his game to a new level during the streak; he has a 1.44 goals against average and .949 save percentage with one shutout in those past 11 games and has not allowed more than two goals in any of his past 10 starts. It’s quite a turnaround from the start of the season, when Skinner was 1-5-1 with a 3.87 goals-against average and .854 save percentage in his first eight games.
“You have to remember he’s only in his second year and he’s going to get better yet,” said Fuhr, whose 226 wins are the most in Edmonton history, and 403 with six teams rank 12th all-time in the NHL. “In your rookie year, you’re playing on emotion and your second year is always tougher. He had a tough start to the year, but most guys do. Everybody’s got a book on you and you’re still finding yourself.
"I went through that my second year, where everything went well my first year and then all of sudden, you get off to a bit of a sluggish start and you start to doubt yourself a little bit. Goaltending takes confidence, and if you don’t have that confidence, then it becomes hard.”
Skinner is exuding confidence through the winning streak, which is reverberating through the entire team. Edmonton (27-15-1) is three wins from tying the NHL record for longest winning streak, set when the Pittsburgh Penguins won 17 in a row from March 9-April 10, 1993.
The Oilers hold the longest winning streak by a Canadian team and a 15th win in a row would tie the New York Islanders (Jan. 21-Feb. 20, 1982) and Penguins (March 2-30, 2013) for third-longest in NHL history.
“You can see it just the way he carries himself on the ice and you can see that the guys believe in him and that’s the big difference,” Fuhr said of Skinner. “He’s definitely a legit No. 1 and the sky is definitely the limit for him.”
Selected by Edmonton in the third round (No. 78) of the 2017 NHL Draft, Skinner was 29-14-5 with a 2.75 GAA, .914 save percentage and one shutout in 2022-23, his first full season in the League. Skinner was selected to play in the 2023 NHL All-Star Game and was a finalist for the Calder Trophy, awarded to the NHL rookie of the year.
This season, Skinner started by sharing playing time with Jack Campbell. But with the Oilers struggling on the way to a 2-9-1 start, Campbell was sent to Bakersfield of the American Hockey League after making five starts, and Skinner took over the No. 1 job. He hasn’t looked back since.
“It (the 11 straight wins) means a lot. I was feeling a lot of emotions, especially when I went out on the ice for the First Star,” Skinner said after the win Tuesday. “It is pretty cool to be able to break a record from one of the best goalies to ever live. He is obviously a guy I look up to and have talked to. He is just one of the best. I am very fortunate to be able to break it.”
Fuhr, who won the Cup with Edmonton in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1990 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2003, approached the game in a similar manner to Skinner: They share a calm demeanor and the ability to shake off allowing a goal, instead focusing on stopping the next shot.
“I don’t really know how he thinks about it, but I know when I played, once a goal goes in there’s nothing you can do about it, so there was no sense worrying about it,” Fuhr said. “It’s easy to say and harder to do, because you never want to give up a goal.
"Human nature is to worry about the goals you give up, so you have to try and shut that out. You can worry about it when you get home, but the next morning you have to be able to let it go and get back to business, and that’s not something that happens naturally.”
During his days with the Oilers, Fuhr had a reputation for being able to shut the door in tight games regardless of how many goals he had previously allowed.
Edmonton had confidence in Fuhr then, and has it in Skinner now.
“Definitely," Fuhr said. "You look at his body language and trust me, teams see body language. So, if you’re carrying yourself in a positive way, the teams is going to see that and they’re going to feed off that. And if you watch Stuart, he plays with a ton of confidence and he exudes that confidence and that’s what a team has to have.”
Fuhr, 61, who lives in Palm Springs, California, and works as a color commentator on broadcasts for Coachella Valley of the AHL, said he's enjoying watching Skinner and the Oilers on their current run. He says he sees parallels in this season’s team and the championship teams he played with in Edmonton.
“It’s similar in ways, they love to play an offensive game, but at the same time, they’re learning to play the close-checking games and the defensive games,” Fuhr said. “They’re winning both ways and good teams do that. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time to learn that.”
The Oilers have not lost since a 3-1 defeat at the New York Islanders on Dec. 19.
“The big thing is that is you have a belief you can win every night,” Fuhr said. “Not every night is going to go the way you want, so the nights that it’s not going the way you want, you have to find ways to win hockey games, and they’re doing that right now.
"They’re winning without their A-game some nights and that’s what the good teams do, they find a way to win when they don’t have their A-game.”
