The Minnesota Wild find themselves down 2-1 in the series against the Dallas Stars after a heartbreaking double-overtime loss in Game 3.
Although things are looking a little bit bleak right now, I think there is some reason to be optimistic if you’re a Wild fan. That’s because I think we’ve seen the Wild find somewhat of a solution on how to crack Jake Oettinger, who’s played very well at times in this series as well as throughout his career.
The Wild have struggled to get the puck to the middle of the ice in Games 1 and 2, but when they’ve been able to get their shots off, I think they’ve found something they can exploit.
The Wild Need to Target Oettinger’s Blocker
So far in this series, the Wild have scored 10 goals in three games on Oettinger. Out of those 10 goals we’ve seen get past Oettinger, five of those have beaten him on the blocker side.
It’s not only been a trend through this series, but it was also one through the regular season with Oettinger. Now, the NHL is relatively limited in the publicly available statistics compared to those available to baseball and football fans.
While it is limited to things like save percentage (SV%) on shots towards a goalie’s blocker, Kevin Woodley of NHL.com did a great deep dive before the playoffs started on each goalie in this series.
NHL.com tracked 100 goals scored on Oettinger near the end of the regular season. The area where teams found the most success when shooting on Oettinger was the high blocker, where 25 of the 100 goals were scored.
For those of you who haven’t seen the goals, four out of the five goals beat Oettinger clean without a deflection. One of the things many goaltending experts will tell you is that Oettinger has a very wide stance in comparison to other NHL goalies.
Due to the fact that he gets so low, it can become hard for him to get to pucks that are shot towards the high blocker portion of the net. I think you can see it in motion on the goal to give the Wild the 3-2 lead in Game 3.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, the Wild struggled mightily to get shots from the middle of the ice. It felt like all the open ice that was there in Game 1 was taken away significantly by the Stars. Not only was the shot suppression shown in the Wild recording just 31 shots through five periods of play, but it was also shown in their shot chart.
Hockeyviz.com does a fantastic job of posting shot charts that tell you where the shot was taken, if it was deflected and if it went in. If you click on the hyperlink to look at the chart, you’ll notice the majority of the shots from even strength came from the outside.
Something that was interesting to me when comparing all three charts from each game is that in Game 3, the Stars were significantly better at taking away the middle of the ice.
The chart I hyperlinked is even-strength chances, but one of the bigger factors I’m looking at was on the power play. The shot totals on the man advantage in the middle of the ice have also gone down big time. Something I noticed in Game 3 was that when Minnesota was on the power play, it felt like they were trying to generate all their chances off of Quinn Hughes’ stick.
In Game 1, they did a fantastic job of working the puck low to high. What I mean by that is they would get the puck below the goal line and find Joel Eriksson Ek in the slot, which created two goals in Game 1.
So the Wild have found a weakness with Oettinger on his blocker side. I’m sure they saw it in their pre-series film sessions, but now they need to execute.
They have to find ways to get into the middle of the ice and hopefully get their low-to-high power play up and running again.
Free Newsletter
Get Minnesota Wild coverage delivered to your inbox
In-depth analysis, breaking news, and insider takes – free.