Dallas Stars

Jake Oettinger stopped everything for the Dallas Stars, but their inability to score kills their chances to extend their season as the Calgary Flames win ...

He scored the Stars’ first goal on Sunday night. He played all 82 games, and scored a pedestrian 46 points. Oettinger stopped 61 shots but it was the one he barely allowed in at the 15:09 mark of overtime that ended it. They were not good enough to be more than that. The Stars are a decent team, with some NHL stars in their lineup. They were good enough to be good. The Stars elected not to trade defenseman John Klingberg earlier this season, and he will likely leave in free agency. He had one other assist in the series, and he now looks like a third line player. The Stars reaching the Stanley Cup Final, in the Edmonton bubble, filled the front office with a sense of false security. He spent too much on defenseman Sergei Gonchar. He spent too much on Jason Spezza. The gamble to draft Russian Valeri Nichushkin with the 10th overall pick in the 2013 NHL Draft was a whiff. Oettinger is the only reason this was a game, and a series. When Tom Gaglardi bought the franchise and saved it from bankruptcy in November of 2011, he thought he had a nucleus similar to the Chicago Blackhawks when that franchise was in a run of winning three Stanley Cups in seven years.