Stars Sign Oettinger to Three-Year Extension
The Dallas Stars have signed starting goaltender Jake Oettinger to a three-year contract extension on Thursday.
The Dallas Stars have finally locked up their man in net.
After months of silence on the negotiation front, the Stars finally found common ground with their goaltender of the future, agreeing to terms with Jake Oettinger on a three-year contract extension worth an average annual value of $4 million.
The deal, which now ties Oettinger to Dallas through the 2024-25 season, will pay the 23-year-old $1.4 million in actual salary along with a $1 million signing bonus for this coming season before increasing to $4.8 million in salary for years two and three.
It's a deal that needed to be made for the Stars, and one that seems to make both sides happy.
After stabilizing the Stars' crease throughout the regular season in 2021-22, Oettinger became the one and only reason Dallas managed to put up anything even remotely close to a fight in their first-round playoff series versus the Calgary Flames back in May, going on a run for the ages that nearly bounced the Pacific Division winners from the postseason before it even really began.
In the seven games it took for the far superior Flames to knock off the Stars, Oettinger shut things down to the tune of an absurd .954 save percentage, facing a total of 285 total shots -- averaging out to 41 shots per game -- and stopping 272 of them.
His teammates, on the other hand, fired just 195 total pucks at the opposing net throughout the series, nearly 100 fewer than they surrendered and, when looking at the heat maps, doing so from far worse angles, too.
And still, Oettinger somehow kept the Stars in it until overtime of Game 7. That's sorcery.
For just $4 million per year, the Stars get a promising young netminder at a very reasonable price precisely when he's set to enter his prime. Oettinger might not be overly experienced, but if his performance last season is a sign of what's to come, the Stars have a stud on their hands.