Playoff Takeaways: Stars, Oettinger bounce back as series with Kraken heats up

Of all the sparkling numbers surrounding goalie Jake Oettinger, the most impressive may be that he was 17-1-4 this season in games after his losses. Of course, it helps that he is also surrounded by the sparkling Dallas Stars.

The goalie and his 108-point team rebounded Thursday as they always do, beating the Seattle Kraken 4-2 in Dallas to even what is looking like a captivating National Hockey League quarter-final playoff series at 1-1.

Second-best to the Kraken’s Philipp Grubauer in Tuesday’s 5-4 loss, Oettinger was excellent in Game 2, especially in the third period when Seattle generated nearly half of its 27 shots. Oettinger is the best goalie remaining in the Stanley Cup playoffs. And he will be an interesting case study as the only one who was a workhorse ace during the regular season.

He played like it Thursday, but the team in front of him looked much better, too.

Outhit 47-19 in Game 1, the Stars held their own physically against the relentless Kraken. They also put more pucks and a lot more traffic in front of Grubauer, who continues to play three levels above his regular-season form.

Wyatt Johnson, Evgenii Dadonov, Joe Pavelski and Tyler Seguin scored for Dallas, which led 2-0 halfway through the game and was up 4-1 late in the third period until Jordan Eberle’s brilliant solo dash lifted Seattle within two goals with 3:28 to play.

Game 3 is Sunday night in the Pacific Northwest.

CALDER CONVERSATION

There wasn’t much surprise about the rookie-of-the-year finalists announced Thursday by the National Hockey League. Buffalo defenceman Owen Power and Seattle centre Matty Beniers were no-brainer picks, although the Professional Hockey Writers Association could have voted 20-year-old Ottawa defenceman Jake Sanderson ahead of the third finalist, 24-year-old Edmonton Oiler goalie Stuart Skinner, who in his fifth season of professional hockey started 48 NHL games and took his team’s starting job away from $25-million free agent Jack Campbell.

But it will be interesting to find out where Dallas rookie Wyatt Johnston finished in Calder Trophy balloting. Still only 19 years old, Johnson made an impact for the Stars all season (24 goals) as a teenage rookie centre and, even more impressively, continues to do so in the playoffs.

After leading all Dallas forwards in ice time on Tuesday – yes, ahead of quadruple-goal-scorer Pavelski – Johnston scored the first goal on Thursday and set up the third one on the power play. He finished with four shots on net, 17:01 of ice time in all situations and played the bulk of his five-on-five minutes against two-time Cup winner Yanni Gourde, who has been one of Seattle’s best players in the playoffs.

This time last year, Johnston was still in junior hockey, helping drive the Windsor Spitfires’ long playoff run in the Ontario League. Johnston isn’t going to be a special player; he already is a special player.

WHERE ARE HINTZ AND ROBERTSON?

The Kraken are getting a lot of attention for the depth and evenness of their lineup, and their ability to build a 100-point season – then eliminated the Colorado Avalanche in the playoffs – without a bonafide star (Beniers will become one).

The Stars, however, similarly rely on lineup depth and secondary scoring. But they have game-breakers in centre Roope Hintz and winger Jason Robertson, who just posted his second straight 40-goal season (46 goals, actually) before his 24^th birthday.

Through two games against Seattle, they’ve combined for one assist – a secondary helper by Hintz, who won a faceoff before the final Dallas goal on Thursday. Hintz has been dangerous, but Robertson has looked out of sorts and finished Game 2 with just a single shot on net. He missed the target entirely on a wide-open chance from the hashmarks in the first period.

Hintz and Robertson combined for seven goals and 19 points in Dallas’ six-game series win against Minnesota to open the playoffs. But Stars are not getting past the Kraken without their stars contributing. Just saying.

ANOTHER CINDERELLA STORY

Reason 37 for why the Stanley Cup playoffs are so great is that everyone starts over from zero and someone you’ve never heard of can, over the course of up to two months, become a daily hero.

Undrafted Seattle winger Tye Kartye, playing because Jared McCann was concussed after the whistle by Colorado’s Cale Makar in Game 4 of Round 1, scored for the second time in five playoff games and was a wrecking ball, finishing with five hits while skating again beside Beniers and Eberle. A free agent from the Soo Greyhounds, this is Kartye’s first season of professional hockey. Only his family, friends and the Kraken player-development staff knew he existed two weeks ago. But the Stars are seeing a lot of him now.

WE DON’T LIKE. . .

For the second straight game, the Stars coaxed a penalty call with fairly obvious embellishment. Mason Marchment was at least penalized for falling like a jacket from a hanger when bumped by Kraken defenceman Carson Soucy in the second period. But Soucy was still whistled for interference, and Dallas still ended up on the power play when Soucy foolishly circled back after the whistle and prodded Marchment, who naturally buckled like he’d undergone an unanesthetized vasectomy while looking for – and getting -- another call. 

In Game 1, Seguin sold a cross-checking call against Adam Larsson.

Sportsnet insider Elliotte Friedman reported that a lot of managers around the NHL don’t like the embellishment trend and want the league to do something. Let’s hope.

FACEOFFS

If the Kraken are going to win this series, it would help if they started with the puck once in a while. Faceoffs on Thursday were 44-20 for Dallas and, unfortunately for Seattle, this is not a blip. The Kraken ranked 31^st in the league during the regular season with a faceoff win rate of 45.3 per cent. So while Jamie Benn went 11-1 in the circle for the Stars and Luke Glendening was 10-5, Gourde was 3-9 for the Kraken and Morgan Geekie 1-8. The Kraken don’t have to out-duel the Stars on faceoffs to win, but they have to avoid getting skewered on restarts than they did Thursday. Dallas’ clinching goal came directly from a faceoff.

RATTLING MATTY

It’s probably good for Beniers that he has two days to recover before Game 3 because he absorbed a couple of head shots in Game 2. He was accidentally clipped by Robertson in the second period when the players collided away from the puck, but Beniers was also rocked a couple of times by six-foot-six defenceman Jani Hakanpaa. Beniers did not register a shot while going pointless in 19:38 of ice time – a workload that begs a question: “Where was the concussion spotter?”