2024 Report Card: Jake Oettinger, voodoo child
A slight return? 'Slight' is the operative word here for a player who's offered more in the past.
Slow season is upon us; just not here. I’ll have a report card for every Dallas player going through August. As always, consider upgrading to paid subscriber since some of these will be behind a paywall.
One sentence summary
Dallas’ number one goaltender had an off-season before the offseason.
A few good stats
Cap: $4 million (Year 3 of 3)
GP: 54
SV%: .905
GAA: 2.72
xSPAR: 2.2 extra points in the standings (Rank: 26th among 43 goalies with at least 1000 minutes played)
I won’t have an explainer card for this graph but if you’re a little confused, pay attention to the maroon and red bars at the top of each plot: ideally, the maroon bar is longer than the red bar, and you want to see lots of blue on the plot itself. For more of a deep dive into how Micah Blake McCurdy defines expected goals, I recommend reading his syllabus.
We’ll dig deeper into Oettinger’s year, statistically, but this was the story: when forwards had clean shots on him, he got absolutely pieced up. When opposing teams were looking for low danger trash or doing their best Joe Pavelski impression, he was impenetrable. So yea: weird season, in addition to being bad.
Thematically-appropriate highlight
Oettinger’s season in a nutshell: when he was great, it didn’t feel on purpose.
Now let’s do something nuts: let’s predict exactly what Oettinger’s bounceback season will look like.