Every summer in Edmonton fans demand a goalie.
Trade for one. Sign one. Dream about one. Blame the guy already here and convince yourself that somewhere, somehow, there's a masked saviour waiting to solve all the problems.
The conversation doesn't change, but the names do.
Never mind that the Oilers already moved on from Stuart Skinner. Never mind that Tristan Jarry and Connor Ingram are now expected to handle the crease. The instinct in Oil Country remains the same.
Maybe they need another one.
Maybe this guy isn't enough.
Maybe that guy would have stopped one more puck.
It's understandable when goaltenders, especially in Edmonton, live under a microscope. Every mistake is replayed endlessly. Every soft goal feels catastrophic. Every bad night turns into a referendum on the position itself.
But after years of watching this team, one starts to wonder if Edmonton is asking the wrong question.
Because the truth is, the Oilers have spent most of the Connor McDavid era searching for answers in goal.
Cam Talbot.
Mike Smith.
Jack Campbell.
Stuart Skinner.
Now Jarry and Ingram.
At some point, maybe it's worth asking whether constantly changing the names on the back of the jersey addresses the bigger issue.
After all, Skinner helped get Edmonton to two Stanley Cup Finals.
He wasn't Dominik Hasek, and obody would argue otherwise. There were several nights when Calvin Pickard had to come in and settle things down, and there were stretches where Skinner looked like he was fighting the puck.
But teams don't accidentally play in June twice.
Good things were happening in front of him.
And bad things, at times, were happening in front of him too.
Look at Ingram and Jarry.
Neither player arrived with the reputation of being a franchise goaltender. Both came with strings attached. Jarry hasn't settled into Edmonton the way fans would have hoped, while Ingram has somehow become the Oilers 1A.
Maybe both grow into the goaltenders than can compete with each other.
Maybe the tandem works beautifully.
Maybe everybody spends next April talking about how Stan Bowman found his answer.
But expecting either man to solve problems that have existed for years feels unfair, when too often the Oilers have made life difficult on their goaltenders.
Odd-man rushes.
Screens.
Lost coverages.
Rebounds that sit untouched.
Forwards cheating for offence.
Defencemen failing to win battles around the crease.
Those things matter.
Just look around the league.
Sergei Bobrovsky gets plenty of praise in Florida, and deservedly so, but he also benefits from Gustav Forsling, Aaron Ekblad and a team structure that makes life miserable.
Vegas won with Adin Hill because Bruce Cassidy built layers in front of him.
Nobody was confusing him with Patrick Roy, but Vegas defended, and perhaps that's where the Oilers need to spend more of their energy.
Another top-four defenceman wouldn't hurt. Neither would another reliable penalty killer or a third line capable of spending more time cycling pucks and less time scrambling in its own end.
A little more size around the net wouldn't hurt either.
None of those additions would generate nearly as many headlines as trading for the latest goaltending flavour of the month, but they might matter more.
That isn't to suggest the Oilers should stop looking.
Good teams should always be looking.
And if somebody truly special becomes available, Bowman should absolutely make the call.
The problem is that those guys almost never hit the market.
And even when they do, there are no guarantees.
Just ask Toronto.
Just ask Vancouver.
Just ask New Jersey.
There are plenty of talented teams around the league still searching for certainty in net.
They've discovered what Edmonton keeps learning every few years.
Goaltending matters, but it rarely exists in isolation.
Jarry and Ingram might be good enough.
They might not be.
But if the Oilers are serious about getting back into the Stanley Cup conversation, perhaps the better question isn't whether they have the right goalie.
Maybe it's whether they're doing enough to help the ones they already have.
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