Heika’s Take: Oettinger’s shutout propels Stars to 3-0 win to close out back-to-back

On a day where the Dallas Stars could have simply felt sorry for themselves, Jake Oettinger delivered a big, emotional boost in goal.

After news broke this morning that Tyler Seguin could be out for the entire season with a knee injury, Dallas meandered through a wonky first period against the New Jersey Devils. But Oettinger wouldn’t allow any pucks past him, and that allowed his teammates to find their collective strike and power to a 3-0 win on Wednesday night.

“For me, there were two keys – how good Jake was early and then I thought our penalty kill did a real good job of taking energy out of their group,” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. “And then once we got the first one, you could see a little energy come back. I thought it was a real good win.”

Over a real good team. The Devils fall to 16-10-1 with the loss, while the Stars move to 18-5-5. Dallas is now 11-1-2 in its past 14 games and is doing that while dealing with a ton of injuries on the fly.

The Stars learned Monday that defenseman Lian Bichsel will be out 6-8 weeks with a lower body injury. He joins Thomas Harley and Nils Lundkvist as unavailable members of the blue line. The Seguin injury happened Tuesday against the Rangers after he fell awkwardly and injured his knee. The veteran forward has battled a laundry list of injuries in the past and missed most of last season before returning in the playoffs.

He rehabbed hard all summer and was off to a great start this season.

“It sucks,” said teammate and good friend Jamie Benn. “After seeing the grind he went through last year, and for that to happen, that sucks.”

Benn, ironically, stepped into Seguin’s spot on the right wing with Roope Hintz and Jason Robertson and finished with two assists. He made the pass to Hintz that helped set up Miro Heiskanen’s goal midway through the second period and then made the pass to Esa Lindell that led to Robertson’s insurance goal late in the second.

Both plays were typical of what the Stars have done this season.

“We just play solid and wait for our chances, and then we pounce,” said Oettinger. “If we can just keep it tight and then the two or three chances you give Robo and [Wyatt Johnston] and Mikko [Rantanen], I feel like they’re going to score on a lot of them. That’s what we did tonight, we stayed patient, we didn’t force anything and came up when we needed it.”

Rantanen made it 3-0 in the third period and Dallas was able to put a nice bow on a hectic stretch of six games in nine nights. It was another impressive statement because of the wear and tear both physically and mentally.

“Whenever you’re playing the second night of a back-to-back, your job as a goalie is to help your team get into it,” Oettinger said. “On the road especially, it’s going to take a while to get your legs under you. It felt like if we got out of their ties, we were going to have a pretty good chance.”

This was the 14th shutout of Oettinger’s career and the 161st victory overall. With the win, he passed Ed Belfour for third place on the franchise wins list. It was also his first career victory against New Jersey, meaning that he has now defeated all 31 other NHL opponents.

Getting the clean sheet was important to Oettinger for a lot of reasons. While it would have been easy to relax with a 3-0 lead in the third period, his teammates were very intent on getting the shutout.

“It means a ton,” Oettinger said. “It’s really hard to get a shutout in the NHL. It takes everyone, it’s not just the goalie. When you go up 3-0 and your guys still play hard for you because they know how much it means to you, that means a lot to me as a goalie. I’m thankful to play behind a great group of guys.”

This story was not subject to the approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.

Mike Heika is a Senior Staff Writer for DallasStars.com and has covered the Stars since 1994. Follow him on X @MikeHeika.