The Jeff Skinner Experience took another turn Monday — a good one, this time, after a few months worth of bumpy road in Edmonton.
Skinner is back up to the third line for Tuesday’s game in Boston, skating alongside Adam Henrique and Zach Hyman, a reward for a solid stretch of hockey that illustrates his willingness to buy in and work toward a more relevant role on the Oilers.
He has a goal and an assist in the past two games and, beyond that, is playing a more determined and complete game, so coach Kris Knoblauch is giving him a bump.
It was a bit of a delicate stretch there that could have gone sideways in a hurry when Skinner, who signed in Edmonton expecting to be playing with either Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl, slid all the way down to the fourth line and even sat out a game as a healthy scratch.
He could have taken it badly and made a ruckus, turned his situation into an unpleasant distraction. Instead, he buried his head, accepted his spot and is doing his best to improve his game. The team-first mentality hasn’t gone unnoticed.
This still isn’t how anyone — and certainly not the Oilers — expected this would go. Skinner is a natural sniper and they thought Draisaitl’s wing would be a perfect place to turn his skills into a deadly weapon.
The line didn’t quite mesh and the downward slide began. The minutes tapered off as Skinner bounced between the second and third lines, then between the third and fourth before finally settling at the bottom eight games ago.
