A familiar feeling washed over fans of the Edmonton Oilers last night when the Winnipeg Jets opened the scoring: Contempt for their goaltender. Late in the first period of a scoreless game, Chris Thorburn’s innocent shot from the right faceoff circle would have gone wide if it hadn’t been touched. Instead, Oilers goaltender Devan Dubnyk attempted to swat the shot away with his blocker and missed. The puck deflected off his goal stick into the back of the net, and every Oiler fan essentially thought to him or herself, with varying degrees of disgust or profanity, “Here we go again.”
That blemish was Dubnyk’s only mistake of the night, as he stopped each of the Jets’ other 28 shots on goal to help the Oilers preserve a 2-1 victory. While his spectacular saves – most notably a remarkable glove stop in tight on an Olli Jokinen bullet – earned him a win, they didn’t make people forget the softie he had given up earlier in the evening. Unfortunately for Dubnyk that sums up his plight in Edmonton these days: Underrated by those who don’t know him, underappreciated by those who do.
Unless you considered Jussi Markkanen to be a legitimate starter, Dubnyk is the first homegrown (drafted and developed) starting goaltender the Oilers have had since Grant Fuhr, which makes him a point of near-constant debate among a fanbase that’s slow to accept him. The reason, quite simply, is that fans have known Dubnyk since June 26, 2004, the day he was drafted 14th overall by the Oilers. They’ve seen all the warts in his game over the last nine seasons, tracking his gradual development from WHL to ECHL to AHL to NHL. And he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt that previous Oilers netminders received.
Bill Ranford took the reins from Fuhr without any suspicion, Curtis Joseph had already dazzled people in St. Louis when he arrived in town, and Tommy Salo had endured his growing pains with the New York Islanders before saving the franchise from the ill-fated Bob Essensa-Mikhail Shtalenkov tandem. Even Dwayne Roloson and Nikolai Khabibulin had each played more than 250 NHL games by the time they donned the copper and blue, cementing themselves as sure-fire starting goaltenders.
In Dubnyk’s case, he’s fighting for respect or shrugging off derision with every spectacular save and suspect goal. He might have won the starting job, but he still has yet to win the trust of many fans who can recall nights where he looked shell-shocked (or just simply got shelled) in an NHL crease. However, with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Sam Gagner out of action for at least the first month of the season, the Oilers are thin as crepe paper up the middle. With that much firepower and stability missing from the lineup, Dubnyk will have to stand much taller than his six-foot, six-inch frame for the Oilers to have any early success.
Dubnyk is begrudgingly accepted in Edmonton, but he’s absolutely beloved in Stockton, California. It’s no secret that I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and while I was born in Alberta I prefer to live in California, for obvious reasons. If you can’t do the math on that I can’t help you. Every now and then you’ll see me sporting an Oilers T-shirt or ball cap, and if I’m really feeling frisky the Gretzky jersey makes an appearance. I’ve been stopped about a half-dozen times by hockey fans who want to discuss a particular Oilers player – not Hall or Eberle or Klima, but Dubnyk.
Dubnyk wasn’t in California for a long time, but it sure was a good time. The lanky netminder only played 43 games for the ECHL’s Stockton Thunder during the 2006-07 season, but he made a huge impact on a successful team, posting a 2.56 goals against average and .921 save percentage. Dubnyk’s performance earned him a lot of fans who still follow his career (and the Oilers) with interest today, and has the bobblehead to prove it.
A strong season between the pipes for the Oilers should help him convert a few more of the non-believers, earning him the level of respect that players like Ranford, Salo and Roloson enjoyed while they were in Edmonton. Of course, a lengthy playoff run would hurt either. At this point, simply making the playoffs would likely earn him a healthy boost in respect and adulation. It would also cause a feeling to wash over Oiler fans that they haven’t experienced since Fuhr left town: Trust in a homegrown goaltender.
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