Oettinger, Stars shut out Blues, 1-0 Blues end season a slide, Dallas stays one point atop Central

In Dallas, Wyatt Johnson was the game’s lone striker on Thursday night, His third period goal at 3:45 gave the Stars a 1-0 leaf over the St Louis Blues and final score. “You want to play in the NHL, but you want to win the Stanley Cup,” said Johnston. “That’s in your dreams, winning the Stanley Cup. That’s what I’ve dreamt about many, many times. It’s really, really exciting just with how good of a team we have here, and going into the playoffs in my first year and having a great opportunity to win it.”

Jake Oettinger made 25 saves for the shutout.

“It felt like a playoff game, especially in the third, and how they were coming at us with nothing left to lose, really, in their season and just playing proud,” Dallas forward Tyler Seguin said. “You respect that. We haven’t had one of these in a while, one of these real tight 1-0 games. It was great.”

Dallas moved to 47-21-14, and maintained a one-point lead over the Colorado Avalanche for the top spot in the Central Division.

“We talked between the second and third, that’s going to be a playoff-type game,” Dallas coach Peter DeBoer said. “You’re facing a hot goalie, or you’re not getting the calls from the officials, whatever the adversity you’re facing, you’ve just got to stick with it, stick with it, don’t get impatient. That’s when you lose a game like that, you step outside of your comfort zone trying to push too hard. I thought we did a good job of just sticking with it.”

St Louis ended the season at 37-38-7.

“We hung in there,” St. Louis coach Craig Berube said. “[Jordan Binnington] was really good in the game for us. Made some big saves early on in the first, and in the third, too. Kept us in the game.”

Binnington made 33 saves in the loss.

“It’s tough. You work hard to play at this time of year, obviously,” Binnington said. “It’s frustrating. It just felt like it wasn’t our time, it wasn’t meant to be. Everybody here, we worked hard. It just didn’t feel like it was going our way, and that happens. That’s part of being a professional athlete and a competitor. It’s how you handle it. You’ve got to just clear your mind, reset, refresh, recharge, and come back at it even stronger.”