Jake Oettinger talks about the Vezina chatter, and Joe Pavelski confirms Wyatt Johnston's living situation.
Jake Oettinger talks about the Vezina chatter, and Joe Pavelski confirms Wyatt Johnston's living situation.
“Otter” for Vezina: Given his outstanding numbers last season, Jake Oettinger is certainly in the conversation to claim the Vezina Trophy come next summer as the NHL’s most outstanding goaltender.
In a recently conducted preseason poll, site editors at The Hockey News selected Oettinger as the favorite to win the prestigious award ahead of the likes of Ilya Sorokin, Juuse Saros, Connor Hellebuyck and Sergei Bobrovsky.
That would be quite an impressive feat for the 24-year-old Lakeville, MN native, who was asked on Friday about the prospect of potentially securing the honor.
“I’d love to. That’s not something that I think about every day, but who wouldn’t want to put their name on that trophy with the guys that have won that before? That’s as much a team trophy as anything. You’ve got to have a heck of a team. There’s never been a goalie that’s won it that’s been on a bad team. I have the team for it, I have the D and the guys in front of me, and it’s just up to me to keep the puck out of the net now,” said Oettinger. “Obviously, that’s something that I want to win, but it’s not my No. 1 goal. My No. 1 goal is hopefully to win the division and the conference.”
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During his media availability, the former 26th-overall selection also spoke glowingly about working alongside his veteran counterpart, Scott Wedgewood.
There’s major respect there.
“He’s one of my favorite goalie partners I’ve ever had in my whole career. First and foremost, he’s just such a good guy. He works his butt off every day, and he’s a heck of a goalie. Obviously, there’s only one net and he wants to be in net and so do I, so we push each other every day. He wants the best for me and I want the best for him, so it’s just been a great, healthy relationship,” praised Oettinger. “We’re really good friends off the ice, so that makes it just more fun. I love coming to the rink every day and having him as a goalie partner.”
Home sweet home: Forward Wyatt Johnston spent his rookie season living with Joe Pavelski and his family, and that arrangement will continue this year.
Pavelski confirmed the news on Friday, saying “we’ll just roll it back and go from there.”
Johnston, 20, clearly benefited from his time under the veteran’s roof given his rather smooth transition to NHL life to the tune of 24 goals and 41 points in 82 games.
The Toronto native then added four more goals in 19 playoff appearances and continued to make quite an impression on management in the process.
“It’s kind of hard to put a number on it or whatever, but it helped a ton,” confirmed Johnston, when asked about the impact of residing with the Pavelskis. “I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like living on my own or not having a guy like that around to kind of help me through things and just kind of learn off of, so I’m pretty lucky and pretty happy with how it went."
Nevertheless, Johnston did consider finding his own digs for his sophomore campaign.
The prospect of continuing to learn from Pavelski on a daily basis, however, was just too good to pass up.
“Kind of ever since the end of last year, I kind of knew it would be a pretty good spot. I looked into things a little bit and thought about maybe what it would be like getting your own place and being on your own a little bit more, but then at the end of the day, I kind of just thought: ‘It’s Joe Pavelski. He’s a pretty cool guy to be around.’ The set up there is amazing,” explained Johnston. “When I really thought about it, it kind of didn’t really make sense to do anything else other than to be with him. It was kind of an obvious choice.”
Giving back: After two consecutive days of intense workouts, the Stars won’t be on the ice on Saturday.
Instead, the entire training camp roster and hockey operations staff will be taking part in community events with Central Texas Food Bank and Sleep in Heavenly Peace, both of which are located in Austin.
Players will be split into two groups to serve either organization. Tasks include packaging emergency food boxes, sorting produce and assisting with the needs of the food bank, or making beds for kids in the area who don't have a place to sleep.
The Stars will then begin their preseason schedule on Sunday with a matchup against the Arizona Coyotes at the H-E-B Center at Cedar Park starting at 5:00 p.m. CT.
Head coach Pete DeBoer provided some insight into the projected lineup that is expected to play.
“I think you’re going to see a lot of guys in that first game that we want to give an early look to. I think we’re going to go easy on some of the veteran guys,” said DeBoer. “We’ve had two tough days of camp. Arizona’s “A” team is in Australia right now, so I think it’ll be a heavy roster of guys that we want to give an early look to show what they can do in a real game.”