Report: Major goaltending controversy appears to be brewing in Edmonton.

The Edmonton Oilers may have a very serious goaltending controversy on their hands, although when you look at it purely from a numbers perspective things may not be all that controversial. 

After a very poor campaign during the 2017 - 2018 National Hockey League regular season the Edmonton Oilers made relatively few changes to their roster heading into this year and that was a sign that the team had high expectations that several of their players would have a bounce back year and return to form. Among those players was goaltender who finished last season with a career worst 3.02 goals against average and a career worst .908 save percentage over the course of 67 games played for the Oilers.

Now you could certainly give the 31 year old netminder some slack for his poor performance last season when you consider just how poorly the team in front of his was playing. In fact the Oilers have, in recent history, been a rather dysfunctional organization at times so it was very hard to pin down the blame on Talbot while everything else seemed to be falling apart around him. That being said though the Oilers have been considerably better to start the 2018 - 2019 NHL regular season and Talbot has been much worse than even his career worst form from last season.

Through his first 14 games of the regular seaso nthis year Talbot has recorded an abysmal 3.31 goals against average and has one of the NHL's worst save percenbtages for a starting goaltender with an .888. Those numbers are simply not good enough if you're going to be a true number 1 goalie in the NHL and, after a particularly ugly performance against the Las Vegas Golden Knights on Sunday, it seems like Oilers head coach Todd McLellan may have finally seen enough to demote Talbot from that position. In a recent article for Sportsnet, NHL isnider Mark Spector indicated that Talbot has lost the starting job to a goaltender with almost no NHL experience.

From Spector:

The Golden Knights eventually prevailed by a 6-3 score, at which point Talbot surrenders one more thing:

His label as the No. 1 goaltender for the Edmonton Oilers.

Step right up, Mikko Koskinen. The job is yours as long as you can hold it.

Outside of 4 games with the New York Islanders going back the better part of a decade Koskinen had never played in the NHL until joining the ranks of the Oilers this season, plying his craft instead overseas in the Kontinental Hockey League. The Oilers liked what they saw from him however and opted to bring him in, and it may turn out to be their saving grace for this NHL season.

Through his first 7 games as a member of the Edmonton Oilers roster Koskinen has recorded a 2.60 goals against average and a .917 save percentage, numbers that while not outstanding clearly demonstrate that he is performing well above the level at which Talbot is on at this time. Now the issue here of course is that the sample size from Koskinen is too small to suggest that he is ready to take on the role as a full time starter, but he has been good enough, and Talbot has been bad enough, that he at least deserves a shot to win the job.