DALLAS — If you didn’t know any better, you might think Jake Oettinger just didn’t care.
His voice is never pitched, his demeanor never animated. He sits at his locker after morning skates and casually discusses hockey, golf, the human condition — whatever you can throw at him — while nearly every other goalie in the league insists they can’t be bothered on game days, because they’re too mentally locked in on the game (you know, the one that doesn’t start for nine more hours).
Then Oettinger sits at his locker after games, looking like he’s barely broken a sweat, casually dissecting and/or dismissing the 60 minutes of madness that just played out in front of him.
On first glance, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between an Oettinger who just won Game 7 of a playoff series and an Oettinger who just sat down for book club.
So while Dallas Stars fans were lamenting the way Game 1 of this first-round series with the Minnesota Wild went, perhaps tossing and turning and staring at the ceiling all night, Oettinger was not. His Saturday night was like any other.
“As soon as I leave the rink, I really never think about it again,” he said. “That’s goaltending in a nutshell.”
But don’t mistake Oettinger’s coolness for dispassion. There’s a difference between a steady pulse and a lack of one, and Oettinger’s short-term memory is one of his greatest assets. It’s why he was so nonchalant shrugging off Dallas’ 6-1 loss in Game 1. It’s why his teammates were so unconcerned with Oettinger’s pedestrian performance in that one. It’s why Stars coach Glen Gulutzan never thought of triggering a statewide crisis by yanking his No. 1 goalie in favor of journeyman backup Casey DeSmith.
Look, there are plenty of things for the Stars to be worried about in this series — Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber on the back end, Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy up front, the Foligno boys in the corners, just to name a handful.
Jake Oettinger sure as heck isn’t one of them.
So nobody was surprised — least of all, Oettinger himself — when he turned out to be the best player on the ice Monday night in the Stars’ frantic, physical and fabulously entertaining 4-2 win over the Wild. He made 28 saves, gloving down three point-blank chances in the first period alone, staring down Boldy again and again and again, and sparking Dallas to victory in what felt like a must-win game, with the series shifting to St. Paul for Game 3 on Wednesday night.
This is what Oettinger does. He moves on. He bounces back. He responds. He’s now 19-8 with a .919 save percentage in playoff games following a loss. Jake Oettinger Jake Oettinges. Time and time again.
“He’s a top-notch goalie in this league,” captain Jamie Benn said. “He’s been strong for us ever since he got here. His ability to bounce back in games is pretty impressive. Just goes to show how mentally strong he is.”
None of this is to say that Oettinger doesn’t feel feelings. He’s just exceptionally good at managing them, at channeling them. He said that he still gets “butterflies” in every game he plays in and called it a “dream come true” to play in front of the raucous Dallas crowd, 18,000-plus towels waving and voices straining. And, man, were they ever into this one.
Game 1 rattled those in the crowd more than it rattled the steely players on the ice, and you could sense it early. The crowd was trying to will the Stars to snap out of their baffling Game 1 funk, going wild for every simple clear, every successful pass through the neutral zone. When Esa Lindell delivered a minor love tap to Danila Yurov in the corner in the opening minutes, the crowd responded like it was the most devastating, bone-crunching hit ever made. They just wanted something, anything, that would make it clear Game 2 would be different than Game 1.
It almost wasn’t. But Oettinger wouldn’t allow a repeat.
A little more than eight minutes into the game, Bobby Brink found Yurov all alone in the low slot from behind the net. Oettinger swatted the puck away, and moments later, Wyatt Johnston flung a shot off the back boards that bounced in off Minnesota goalie Jesper Wallstedt. Less than four minutes later, Oettinger made a sprawling glove save on Boldy off a driving centering pass from Quinn Hughes. Three minutes later, he gloved down a Boldy breakaway.
It could have been 4-0 Wild. Instead, it was 1-1, with Brock Faber’s sensational one-man effort the only Minnesota shot that found its way past Oettinger in the frenetic first.
“Just tried to leave my mark on the game,” Oettinger said. “Wanted to step up and be better than I was in Game 1. Happy I was able to do that.”
Oettinger’s performance, as it so often is, was emblematic of his team’s performance. You don’t win six playoff series in three years without a little resilience, without learning lessons and applying them quickly.
Passive and disinterested in Game 1, the Stars were fully engaged in Game 2. Colin Blackwell, all 5-foot-9 of him, laid out 6-foot-2 Yakov Trenin, the league’s leading hitter, with a massive shoulder-to-shoulder blow (Blackwell’s helmet appeared to catch Trenin in the head as the two bodies reverberated from the contact) late in the first period after Zach Bogosian put his teammate in an awful position with a poorly thought out pass in the neutral zone.
Benn started a shoving and jawing match with Joel Eriksson Ek near the benches.
Tyler Myers doled out three big hits on one penalty kill in the second period.
And when Marcus Foligno rag-dolled Thomas Harley head-first into the stanchion and then the ice at the end of the second, all the Stars on the ice rushed into the fray.
“I thought they beat us up the first game,” Blackwell said. “That’s what this seven-game series is going to be all about. … A lot of guys did a really good job of just being physical and being harder to play against tonight.”
The Stars’ Jason Robertson had reason to celebrate after scoring in Game 2 against the Wild. (Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
Disconnected and disjointed in Game 1, the Stars worked together as a five-man unit. There was more puck support in the defensive zone, quicker breakouts, cleaner passing through the neutral zone and more attacking the net in the offensive zone. Johnston’s first goal came from a shoot-first mentality and a fortuitous bounce. Matt Duchene made it 2-1 early in the second with a power-play goal, crashing the net and chipping a backhanded Mikko Rantanen feed between Wallstedt’s legs. Jason Robertson got his second goal in as many games by deflecting a Nils Lundkvist point shot past Wallstedt at 7:11 of the third. And after Faber scored again — wisely going high blocker on Oettinger in light of the slew of glove saves — the Stars locked it down from there.
Lost and confused on the penalty kill in Game 1, the Stars killed off all four Wild power plays in this one, playing smart and aggressive and leaning on Oettinger when necessary.
“We know we can be one of the best PKs in the league when we’re all working together,” Oettinger said. “So many clutch, huge moments. In the playoffs, it’s not necessarily how many kills you can get, but the ones you need at the crucial times. We got the kills at the right times and really proud of the guys in front of me.”
“They wanted a bounce-back game, too, the PK,” Robertson said. “They wanted to bounce back hard, and they did. They showed up.”
To a man, the Stars bounced back from one of the team’s worst performances in recent memory. These two teams are both so talented, so deep and so confident that it’s difficult to determine who has the edge — up front, on the back end, on special teams, even in goal, given how well Wallstedt has played of late, and how middling Oettinger’s regular season was.
But experience is where Dallas has the clear advantage. Oettinger and the Stars have been here before. They’ve done this before. And they’ve won like this before.
And so there Oettinger sat, quietly holding court at Benn’s stall just after midnight as Monday became Tuesday, wearing his shorts and his suspenders, looking like he had just spent the past three hours napping peacefully. He was proud of his guys. He was proud of himself. But only for a few more minutes.
Once he walked out the door into the cool Dallas night, it would all be forgotten.
“For sure,” he said. “I’m already thinking about Game 3. Can’t wait.”
