Jake Oettinger’s ‘championship’ comments will fire up Stars fans after critical Game 4 win

“It’s plays like that,” explained the star netminder, “that separate winning a championship and going home.”

Oettinger added: “It’s not over unless you give up, and no one in here has given up, and now we’re right back in this series. I just couldn’t be more proud of the way the guys played, and just the decisions and the little plays that separate this time of year, and just the way that Pete [DeBoer] was preaching playing the right way. It was a great message, and guys took it and played the right way and got rewarded.”

In their last playoff series — the 2023 Western Conference Final — the Stars played these same Golden Knights, falling down 3-0 and never fully recovering in an eventual six-game loss. Things were trending a similar fashion in Round 1 of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs after the club lost both games at American Airlines Center last week.

But Dallas found a way to win two games in a very difficult barn in Las Vegas — and it’s now a completely different series, with the Stars stealing home-ice advantage back.

Stars are back in driver’s seat

In 2023-24, the Western Conference’s best regular-season team is proving they won’t be an easy out in the playoffs. Besides trailing the series 2-0 and 2-1, the Stars had to overcome two separate leads in Game 4.

Vegas led Dallas 1-0 late in the first period and 2-1 early in the second frame, but Oettinger would shut it down after that. He made 32 saves on 34 shots, including 14 in the final stanza as the Stars were outshot 14-7.

Standout sophomore Wyatt Johnston tied the game on a powerplay halfway through the second period, Ty Dellandrea gave his team the lead late in the frame, and that would be all the scoring Dallas would need. Hintz heroically deposited the empty-netter with 1:22 on the clock.

“There’s no panic in our game,” Stars’ Jamie Benn said afterwards, as the captain continues to chase an elusive Stanley Cup. “You knew they were going to come out hard. They’re a good team. We weathered the storm and found a way to win.”

It was Benn’s 87th playoff contest as Dallas’ captain, one more than Derian Hatcher, who captained the team to the 1999 Stanley Cup, per Cotsonika.

And it was a full team effort from the Stars, who are giving the defending Stanley Cup champions all they can handle in Round 1. The series now becomes a best-of-3, starting with another critical tilt in Texas on Wednesday night.

It’ll be interesting to see if the Stars can hold onto home-ice advantage this time around, or whether the road team will win a fifth consecutive game in this terrific series.