Jake Oettinger has started 13 of the Stars’ first 17 games. Casey DeSmith has started the other four. Between those two jobs sits much of the explanation for why Dallas can spend a Tuesday practice working on its offense without treating the session as an emergency meeting.
Oettinger’s goals-against average is 1.99, DeSmith’s 2.42. Dallas is 10-5-2 with 22 points, and opponents have managed 22.9 shots per game. Coach Glen Gulutzan’s Tuesday emphasis on allowing more offensive freedom therefore comes from a position of relative stability. The Stars have time to improve the attack because keeping the puck out has already given the season a sound beginning.
The two goaltenders’ records also show why the job should be measured beyond victories. Oettinger has nine wins, three losses and an overtime loss, along with three shutouts. DeSmith has one win, two losses and an overtime loss.
Four starts are a small basis for any sweeping verdict about a goalie. DeSmith’s save percentage of .909 is slightly above Oettinger’s .906, while their goals-against averages run in the other direction. Different workloads and results cannot be folded into a tidy argument that one statistic explains everything.
Oettinger has faced 277 shots and saved 251. DeSmith has stopped 100 of the 110 sent his way. That difference in volume belongs alongside their averages.
The percentages describe what happened on those shots, while the distribution of starts determines how much of the season each goalie has carried.
What matters for the offense is that neither goalie’s contribution can score the next Dallas goal. The Stars have 48 through 17 games. That has been enough for a winning record, but Gulutzan said Tuesday that offensive execution has yet to match the defensive standard.
He described changes to the forecheck, breakouts and neutral-zone play that have helped the defense before delivering the intended offensive improvement. The practice’s attention went toward giving players more freedom to create.
That is an appropriate use of the time the goalies have helped provide. It would be easy for a winning team to treat a low scoring total as an aesthetic complaint. Goals matter only until the final horn, after all, and Dallas has heard enough winning horns to avoid panic.
But making the goaltenders preserve every small advantage is a demanding way to keep collecting points. More offense would create room for an imperfect night in net instead of requiring a goalie to make the margin comfortable by himself.
