For 82 games, the Stars performed like a hockey team poised to play into June. Somehow they went into Sunday night’s game in St. Paul wondering if they would even make it to the last day in April.
I suppose, technically speaking, the Stars still don’t know that their season will make it to a home Game 7 next Sunday. But at least they survived Game 4 on the road, winning 3-2 Sunday night by getting a particular performance that was taken for granted before this first-round series began.
To tie the series at 2-2, Dallas needed Jake Oettinger to outplay Filip Gustavsson. Was that such a difficult hill to climb?
Last year Oettinger was great in a seven-game loss to Calgary (.954 save percentage, 1.81 goals against) when the Stars lacked the Flames’ firepower. Oettinger won 37 games this season, and while Gustavsson’s other regular season numbers were slightly better, none of the experts put a checkmark next to the Wild goalie’s name a week ago. Heck, Minnesota Coach Dean Evason didn’t even bother starting Gustavsson in Game 2 after he had set a club record with 51 saves in a double overtime Game 1 upset.
Yet coming into Game 4, Dallas’ beloved Otter had surrendered nine goals in regulation in three games. Gustavsson had allowed just three goals in nearly eight periods of hockey, so he sported a 1.18 goals against and .961 save percentage. For one night, though, the Stars got to him while Oettinger was making game-saving stops right to the finish line - a slide-across-the-crease halting of Marcus Johansson with 10 seconds to play wrapping up the win.
It’s a best-of-three series now when the teams reconvene at the AAC Tuesday at a more reasonable starting time of 7 p.m. I refuse to believe home-ice advantage has been regained because both teams are 1-1 at home and because, as we have seen in recent Game 7’s, home ice isn‘t what it used to be. Besides, going into Sunday’s late Edmonton-LA game, home teams are 11-16 in this particular post-season.
What’s that advantage again?
Let’s focus on something more significant than the Stars have regained, and that’s the edge in net. Or at least the belief that their guy is as good or better than Minnesota‘s which is huge, given the rest of Dallas’ advantages in this series. Even without Joe Pavelski — an injury that has shaken this team more than it anticipated — the Stars have the better power-play unit and the superior penalty-killing squad. In fact, it was right after another quality penalty kill that Dallas took what appeared to be control of the game as Roope Hintz hit Evgenii Dadonov, popping out of the box, with a perfect pass for a breakaway and 2-0 lead.
Home ice, yes, the Stars have that going for them, too. But I think other more tangible qualities give Dallas a better than 50-50 chance of bouncing into the next round, presumably (but not definitely) to face the defending champion Colorado Avalanche.
And Oettinger playing his best game was huge. The Stars continue to suffer more breakdowns than they should but he made exceptional stops on second-period breakaways by the Wild’s Kirill Kaprizov and Marcus Foligno. Dallas would go on to score twice with Foligno in the box on suspect penalty calls, but those head-scratchers have been made on both sides in this series. The Stars have just done the superior job in taking advantage.
I don’t expect Gustavsson to become a sieve in Game 5 like we saw with Marc-Andre Fleury in Game 2. But the Stars know he’s beatable and that Oettinger has their back when they slip up. That’s as much as Dallas could ask for in what now becomes a stressfully short series.
