Stuart Skinner and his family receive death threats

After an intense and quite chaotic Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Oilers and the Panthers on Monday night, Edmonton is trailing behind 2-1 in the series. Goalie Stuart Skinner was pulled and replaced by Calvin Pickard after allowing five goals on 23 shots in the 6-1 blowout loss. He has a 7-6 record this spring with a .894 save percentage and a 2.84 goals-against average, and some fans have been frustrated, but others have taken it way to far.

Chloe Skinner, the wife of the goalie, revealed during an appearance on the Breaking the Ice podcast that she has gotten death threats from certain individuals.

“We have a very passionate fan base, and the people here live and breathe for the Oilers,” Chloe Stuart said. “It’s a tale as old as time, where the goalie is the punching bag a bit. This year definitely got intense. There was times where security had to be involved. I specifically have DMs filled with death threats towards the kids, towards myself, from anonymous accounts [with] people hiding behind their screens.

“It can get really ugly, people threatening if they ever see us, they’re going to take us out. It gets intense, and I’m making it lighthearted right now, but when I do read those, I get really scared, and I do obviously worry for the safety of my family and my young boys. It’s terrifying to think that there might be people out there who are going to hurt us over the result of a game. It is a little deranged.”

While Stuart Skinner does have social media accounts, he isn’t the one running them. And so he is lucky enough not to see any of this.

It’s incredible to think that professional athletes have to put this kind of unnecessary pressure on themselves and their families related to the results of matches and are threatened in this way.

Let’s hope things can calm down for Skinner, his wife Chloe and his two kids.

For Game 4 tomorrow night, Oilers head coach Kris Knoblauch kept his goaltending plans for Game 4 also under wraps as he refused to confirm his starting goalie.