but our D has slipped once again and leaves them hanging.
In the Calgary game yes. Not vs Boston or Minnesota especially Minnesota.
This is true, and I'm not asking him to be perfect. But he is insanely streaky. He played out of his mind during the streak, and now has played terrible since. He needs to find a happy medium. If he's going to just be a streaky goalie and they have to deal with that, Pickard is not the guy you want in the backup spot. Pickard would be fine if Skinner could be trusted to be a solid starter for a whole season, then Pickard could just take a few games here and there to rest him. Skinner, can't be trusted not to go on week or month long stretches of subpar play. When he's at his best he's very good, he has trouble staying there. As a result, the Oilers need somebody they can trust to reliably take over when Skinner goes through rough patches.
Bad goaltending can make any defense core look bad. Mistakes are typically only noticed if they're extremely obvious, or lead to a goal. As a result, you don't notice defensive mistakes as much when the goalie is playing well. Just look at Carolina, one of the best defenses in the league, made look like a peewee team near the beginning of the year thanks to awful goaltending from Raanta and Kochetkov.
Much like we can't expect Skinner to sustain is incredible play from the streak, we can't expect the defense to either.
What's more likely?:
all 6 defenseman (or a majority of them) suddenly simultaneously stopped playing well defensively
or
the 1 guy between the pipes isn't playing up to par
I tend to think the latter. Especially when the stats don't support that the defense suddenly sucks out of nowhere, and show a pretty big drop in goaltending performance, with only a small drop in defensive metrics.
Add in the fact that you are not likely to win most games with 2 or even 3 goals... especially given the new NHL and the fact that we have 97 and 29 in the lineup.
This is true. The Oilers have probably 3 true snipers on the whole team: Draisaitl, Kane and Bouchard. One of them is one of the streakiest players in the entire league (Kane). McDavid has been snakebitten lately (like 15 posts in the last 5 games). I think Nuge could be a sniper if he started using his rocket wrister more on the powerplay, but he's a pass first player through and through and that's not about to change anytime soon. Outside of those three the Oilers have a combo of smart playmakers and play drivers, who are great at generating high quality chances for themselves and team mates, but struggle to finish on a consistent basis. Foegele and McCleod are the perfect example: fast, good hands, good playmaking, solid puck carrying ability, no finish. The Oilers need another sniper. A Pavel Buchnevich, or Vladimir Tarasenko, or (optimistically) Jake Guentzel who can finish off some of these chances. For a more affordable option, adding a middle six sniper who can move up and down the lineup could be good as well, along the lines of Anthony Duclair. Los Angeles is pretty much the opposite team to the Oilers in this regard, they rely on a few high tier snipers to finish a more limited number of shots since they play a tight defensive system, that generates fewer chances for them, but stifles opponents in the neutral zone. They turn the puck over, get it to Kempe or Fiala and let them take shots and see what happens.
The Oilers also seem to run into a hot goalie all the time. Probably a combination of a lack of finishing ability and bad luck around the net.
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