Jake Oettinger’s ‘stellar’ shootout performance vs. Golden Knights showed how much he’s grown

For Jake Oettinger, what a difference a year makes.

Oettinger stopped all seven shots he faced in Tuesday’s shootout, lifting the Stars to a 3-2 win over the Vegas Golden Knights that inched them closer to a playoff spot and trimmed the club’s magic number to one.

Oettinger also made 33 saves in regulation and overtime to keep the Stars in the game.

“Those are the moments you dream about: To win a shootout, to get one point away from clinching a playoff spot is what you want and what we worked for all season long,” Oettinger said.

In the shootout, Oettinger made saves on Jack Eichel, Shea Theodore, Nicholas Roy, Chandler Stephenson, Evgenii Dadonov and William Karlsson. Jonathan Marchessault hit the post, so Oettinger thanked his post with a little tap.

“I told one of the guys ‘I had everything inside the net covered,’” Oettinger said. “Thankfully, that hit the post.”

This season, Oettinger has emerged as the Stars’ No. 1 goaltender after starting the season in the AHL. He will likely start Game 1 of the Stars’ playoff series, and maintain that title that fits his selection as a first-round pick in 2017.

At the start of the season, he was fourth on the Stars’ depth chart, but injuries to Ben Bishop, Anton Khudobin and Braden Holtby elevated Oettinger into the role. He’s relished taking on big challenges, something that Khudobin handled down the stretch a season ago.

“It felt like last year down the stretch, when we were fighting for a playoff spot, I feel like I didn’t get the net in those big games,” Oettinger said. “To get the net tonight in this type of game is a great feeling, knowing what I needed to do to step up.”

He’s also drastically improved in shootouts from just one year ago.

Last season, Oettinger stopped just five of 10 shootout attempts as the Stars went 1-3 in his four shootout appearances. This season, he has stopped 15 of 17 attempts, and the Stars are 2-1 in his three games.

“He had a lot of confidence,” Stars forward Jason Robertson said. “He tries really hard to get better at shootouts. He told me that at the beginning of the year that it’s something he wants to work on. At this pivotal moment, it’s great to see that paid off for him. He’s the backbone for this one.”

Oettinger: “I can actually stop them this year. I feel like last year, I didn’t have a ton of confidence in shootouts. Obviously, I played college, so I didn’t get much experience with that in the game. You can do it a million times in practice, but you just got to do it in games. Now, I think I’m a lot more confident.”

Four of Oettinger’s saves kept the Stars alive. One of them sealed the victory.

“Stellar,” Stars forward Tyler Seguin said. “Taught him a lot by practicing on him, teaching him everything he knows by making him look good in practice. I think he’s worked hard in shootouts, and how good he’s gotten at them. That’s all from his determination and his practice and he was huge for us.”

In the third period, Oettinger made a snazzy glove save on Shea Theodore, doing the splits to see around Michael Raffl (who tried to block the shot) and keep the game tied with 2:37 left in the third period.

“I just tried to stay back a little bit so I could give myself more time to react to it,” Oettinger said. “I was a little bit deeper, so I had to stretch more. Thankfully, it went in my glove.”

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