In Calgary, the lyric line “anything you can do, I can do better”, came to mind on Thursday night.
Jake Oettinger made 29 saves and the Dallas Stars shut out the Flames, 2-0, to even their series at 1-1.
“This time of year, the only thing that matters is wins and, obviously, they have a great goalie on the other end and we know it’s going to be tight, so the margin for error for me is very slim,” Oettinger said. “I’m just happy that we were able to close it down in the third and protect the lead and then get that big empty-net goal.”
Game 3 is in Dallas on Saturday.
“He’s very calm, he’s very confident,” Dallas coach Rick Bowness said. “We’re putting a rookie in a tough situation and we don’t know how he’s going to react until we give him that opportunity to play in the playoffs. We’re very confident with him, clearly, but he’s handled it very well. He’s very confident and we love his poise in the net.”
Joe Pavelski opened the scoring in the first period for all the offense Oettinger would need.
“I thought we had plenty of scoring chances tonight,” Calgary’s Johnny Gaudreau said. “Their goalie played well. Couple 2-on-1’s, breakaway. I thought we did a good job in their own zone. We’ve just got to score, got to bear down and put the puck in the net, starting with myself.”
The Flames blanked Dallas, 1-0, in Game 1.
“I thought we made it too easy on them in the first game,” Dallas’ Jamie Benn said. “We were better tonight. They’re going to have their pushes and their good shifts and we handled them well and found a way to just dig in and get it done.”
Michael Raffl added a late empty-net goal for the 2-0 final.
“Felt good,” Pavelski said “You score in the playoffs it’s always nice. Nice to get the lead, all those parts. Yeah, get that one and move on.”
Jacob Markstrom made 21 saves in the Calgary loss.
“It’s playoff hockey,” Calgary’s Tyler Toffoli said. “It’s not easy to score goals in the first place, let alone playing a team like this who plays extremely defensive. We’ve got to find a way and kind of dig deep. Our goal was to go into Dallas and win two games anyways. It doesn’t really change our mindset, I don’t think. We have to go there and be prepared to play in Game 3 and just try to take control of the series again.”
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