Jake Oettinger’s stat line was bad enough without assigning him a goal he never had a chance to stop. He stopped 16 of 20 shots in the Dallas Stars’ 5-2 loss to Montréal on Thursday, but Phillip Danault’s goal at 19:12 of the third period came after Dallas had pulled its goalie. Four goals belong in Oettinger’s ledger. The fifth belongs to the empty net.
That accounting does not rescue Oettinger from a poor night. Four goals on 20 shots is a .800 save percentage, and the Canadiens turned a relatively modest shooting total into a comfortable lead. It does, however, point toward a larger Dallas failure: Montréal repeatedly converted its opportunities before the Stars could make their own pressure count.
The Canadiens needed only 10 first-period shots to score three times. They added six shots and one goal in the second. In the third, Montréal managed four shots and scored none against Oettinger.
The distribution is difficult for a goaltender to defend, especially when the damage arrives in bursts, but it is also difficult to blame entirely on him when the opponent builds a 4-1 lead.
The first period offered the clearest example. Cole Caufield opened the scoring at 7:24, and Wyatt Johnston answered on Dallas’ power play at 12:53. The game was tied again, and Dallas had a chance to make the early exchange irrelevant. Instead, Alex Newhook scored at 16:05, followed by Caufield at 16:32. Twenty-seven seconds transformed a 1-1 game into a 3-1 deficit.
Newhook scored again at 6:11 of the second period, giving Montréal a 4-1 lead. He finished with two goals on two shots, while Caufield scored twice on three shots. Those numbers do not establish that either attempt was easy, nor do they turn Oettinger’s four goals against into a harmless statistical quirk.
They do establish that Montréal finished sharply when its chances arrived and that Dallas failed to keep those moments from becoming decisive.
A goalie can change a game by stopping one of those shots. A team can also change it by preventing a tie from becoming a two-goal hole in less than half a minute. Both statements fit this game. The Stars’ defensive problems were not erased by Montréal’s efficiency, and Oettinger’s responsibility was not erased by Dallas’ mistakes.
The problem was what Dallas did with its chances and what Montréal did with fewer of them. Jakub Dobeš stopped 17 of 19 shots, including all five Dallas shots on goal in the third period. The Stars had time to make a game of it after Jamie Benn scored at 8:52 of the second, cutting the deficit to 4-2 with 31:08 left in regulation.
Johnston and Mikko Rantanen assisted on the goal, and Johnston had also scored Dallas’ first goal. The response was real; the follow-through was missing.
That makes the third period relevant without making it a referendum on Oettinger. Montréal recorded five shots in the period and did not score against him. Dallas also recorded five shots, but Dobeš stopped every one.
