Jake Oettinger is losing the goalie battle for Stars

It should come as no great surprise that the Dallas Stars, following Tuesday’s 4-2 loss in Game 5, find themselves down 3-2 in their first-round series against the Minnesota Wild. After all, these are two of the top three teams in the Western Conference based on regular season point totals, and this series was always destined to go six or seven games. It’s been a tight series thus far, with the two teams nearly even in expected goals-for percentage according to Natural Stat Trick.

The most disconcerting aspect for Dallas fans, though, might be goaltending. An old axiom in hockey is that it’s almost impossible to win a playoff series when your goaltender gets outplayed by your opponent’s. Unfortunately for the Stars, they seem to be experiencing that axiom right now. Dallas goaltender Jake Oettinger hasn’t been bad, sporting an .899 save percentage and a 2.78 goals-against average through the series’ first five games, but his counterpart in Minnesota’s Jesper Wallstedt has simply been better, with a .926 SV% and a 2.05 GAA.

On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton discussed Dallas’ disadvantage in net so far this series.

Tyler Yaremchuk: You look at Jake Oettinger’s stat line there, and it’s not egregious. He gives up three goals on 27 shots. No one’s going to look at that and go “Oof, the goaltending was brutal.” But you kind of view it differently. You didn’t like what Oettinger gave the Stars last night.

Carter Hutton: I didn’t at all. For our audio listeners that don’t have video, we have the goals against, and there’s a couple plays with Jake Oettinger. The one for me, the first one that goes in is the (Matt) Boldy one. It’s 1-1 at that point in the game. This is a power play goal from the top of the circle that just can’t end up in the back of the net. Why I break this down like this is if you watch his stance, he is retreating. As soon as Boldy gets to the top of the circle and starts coming downhill, he’s already retreating into his net and he’s in such a shot-ready stance, his feet are so wide. As he retreats and he gets wider, it’s much harder to adjust your body and shift side to side.

There’s kind of three stances that we approach as a goaltender. When the puck is at the blue line, we’re more in a relaxed stance, we’re up, our stick can be off the ice, we’re generally watching the play. As it works into say the top of the circle you’re a little more of a shooting threat, so I’m going to be a little bit more in a medium stance, and then when it gets in tight we’re down. I think he’s so committed at that point, he can’t really shift his head around the defensive screen. He ends up reaching. This is a routine save. I don’t want to speak ill of a guy who’s a better goalie than my ceiling was in the NHL, but in the NHL a shot from the top of the circle through a one-man screen with no one in front of you is a routine save that just can’t go in.

You can catch the full discussion and the rest of Wednesday’s episode here…