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JAKE OETTINGER FELT INVINCIBLE.

The Dallas Stars were in a Game 7 overtime against the Calgary Flames in the first round of last season’s playoffs. They were there because of Oettinger, the second-year goaltender who had stopped 208 of the 218 shots he had faced in the previous six games.

The finale against the Flames was the thrilling capper on a brilliant series: stopping 64 of 66 shots on goal into the first overtime to become the second goalie to make 60 or more saves in a Game 7 since 1995, when the stat was first tracked.

“You’re so immersed in what you’re doing,” Oettinger recalled. “You feel like you’re never going to get scored on.”

Johnny Gaudreau took the 67th shot that Oettinger faced, hurling the puck at the net from an odd angle to the goalie’s right. It flew over Oettinger’s shoulder and behind him at 15:09 of overtime. Horns blared. Red lights flashed. The Calgary bench emptied. The Stars had been eliminated.

Oettinger couldn’t bring himself to watch his historic effort again during the offseason, given the outcome. “I’ve seen the highlights but I haven’t watched the full thing yet,” he said. “If we would have won that game? Yeah, I would have watched it.”

Looking back at the playoffs, Dallas general manager Jim Nill still chuckles at the irony: What some considered to be the Stars’ biggest playoff liability turned into their greatest asset.

“When we started the series, probably one of the biggest question marks we had was that we had a young goalie getting his first Stanley Cup playoff action,” Nill said. “This résumé isn’t very long. How is he going to handle it? Now we look back on it, and I’ve never seen a young man enjoy the moment as much as he did. He cherished being in the net.”

Oettinger remained in the net after Gaudreau’s overtime goal. Stars captain Jamie Benn skated over to his goalie, still on one knee, to console him.

“If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t even have been close to overtime or having a chance to win,” Benn said. “He’s a phenomenal young goalie. He’s going to be great for this organization for a long time.”

The future is now for Oettinger and Dallas. With a new three-year contract in hand, the 23-year-old goalie entered the 2022-23 season at the top of the Stars’ depth chart for the first time.

“He’s our No. 1 goalie,” Nill said. “He’s grabbed that opportunity. It’s not like you come into a season and say, ‘we’re just going to give it to you.’ No, he’s earned it.”


NILL FIRST SAW Oettinger with the U.S. national development team in Detroit.

“We’ve known him since he was 16,” Nill said. “When you’re playing for the U.S. in these tournaments, you’re a pretty good player. So we got to know him and that’s why we moved a little higher to select him.”

Dallas had the third overall pick in the 2017 NHL draft, selecting Miro Heiskanen. But when Nill saw Oettinger was still on the board late in the first round — no goalies had been drafted yet — he sent the 29th overall pick (from Anaheim) and a third-rounder to Chicago for the 26th overall pick and selected Oettinger.

They respected his character. They loved his size. Oettinger is listed at 6-foot-5, and nothing about that is generous.

“It’s weird. Some guys look tall and they’re lanky. You get next to him, and he’s tall and has size,” Nill said.

After Oettinger and Ben Bishop, who is listed at 6-foot-7, do the Stars officially have a “type” when it comes to their goaltending?

Nill laughed. “We’ve been fortunate that way,” he said. “But that’s also why Bishop has been a great mentor for him.”

Oettinger joined the Stars in 2019 after three seasons with Boston University. His development track had its twists and turns.

He played 38 games with the AHL Texas Stars in 2019-20 before the COVID pandemic shuttered sports. His NHL debut was in the Western Conference “bubble” playoffs. Oettinger was the Stars’ third-string insurance goaltender. Then Bishop was injured and Oettinger found himself backing up Anton Khudobin. His NHL debut came in 17 minutes of relief against the Vegas Golden Knights in the Western Conference finals. He also saw 19 minutes of action in Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Tampa Bay Lightning. In total, Oettinger faced eight shots and made eight saves.

Bishop’s status for the 2020-21 season impacted Oettinger. The Stars hoped the former Vezina Trophy winner could make a comeback, but Bishop missed the entire season. Oettinger ended up playing 29 games in back of Khudobin, going 11-8-7 with a .911 save percentage. Analytically, he was superior to Khudobin, who played below replacement level. Oettinger saved 2.97 goals above average.

But at the start of the 2021-22 season, Oettinger was shocked to find himself back in the AHL, as the Stars went with free agent signing Braden Holtby and Khudobin as their netminders. (Bishop, who hadn’t seen the ice since August 2020, officially retired in December 2021.)

Nill said it was a call they made based on trying to get Oettinger more reps. “We knew we had to get him down in the minors. He wasn’t happy about it. But if he looks back, it was probably the best thing for him,” the GM said.

Oettinger returned to the NHL club on Nov. 16, 2021. He gradually took over the crease, starting 46 games, winning 30 of them and posting a .914 save percentage. He closed out the season winning five of seven starts before his masterful series against the Flames.

The Calgary series changed things for Oettinger, who could sense his stock rising considerably with peers around the NHL after that performance.

“I could feel it a little bit,” he said. “Everyone’s watching the playoffs.”


HOCKEY NICKNAMES AREN’T exactly complex, so it should come as no surprise that Oettinger’s is “Otter.” What is surprising: That the goalie has his own mascot.

“My guy does a little otter cartoon guy,” Oettinger said. “Last year I threw a little cowboy hat on him.”

Goalie mask designer David Gunnarsson created an animated otter that has adorned several of Oettinger’s masks.

“I was like, this could be like my thing,” Oettinger said.

Last season, it was a cowboy otter. This season, it’s a golfing otter, complete with gloves and a club.

The otter meme goes beyond the mask for Oettinger. Cartoon otters have appeared on T-shirts. Otters have become a way for fans to celebrate him on social media. “When I have a good game, people tweet out a GIF with otters,” he said.

How many otters Oettinger receives this season will depend on how he handles being the No. 1 guy. Stopping 60-plus pucks in a single game takes a different mental fortitude than backstopping a team to the postseason in 60-plus games. One made him feel invincible. The other makes him feel indispensable.

“I think for me, it’s going to be a lot of the mental side this season,” he said. “I’ve never come in as a No. 1. I’m just going to have to deal with … not ‘pressure,’ but more responsibility, obviously.”

The Stars are a team with a veteran core — Benn, Tyler Seguin, Joe Pavelski — augmented by a collection of young stars under 24, like Heiskanen, Jason Robertson and Oettinger. The goalie believes it’s on him to create the foundation for that roster to thrive.

“It’s going to be up to me to get this team back into the playoffs,” he said. “It’s a lot of responsibility. But it’s what I signed up for.”

Oettinger signed something else during the offseason: a three-year contract worth $4 million against the salary cap annually.

Nill said the Calgary series didn’t necessarily complicate those negotiations. For all the confidence he has in Oettinger, this was still a 23-year-old goalie with two seasons and 77 games to his credit.

“He did a good job for us during the year, but the body of work was a short time frame,” Nill said.

Their contract talks stretched through the late summer. Could Dallas go higher than the $3.979 million AAV that the Flyers gave Carter Hart in August 2021 after 101 NHL games?

On Sept. 1, the Stars landed on the $4 million AAV deal with Oettinger, who is a restricted free agent when it expires in 2025.

“We got something done. Maybe a lot for a player that played that number of games. But he deserved it,” Nill said. “He’s already earned it based on who he is and knowing how his teammates want to play for him — that tells you something.

“He’s a player with high-end character. And he’s our future, going forward.”

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Gundy calls out Ducks’ budget; Lanning fires back

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Gundy calls out Ducks' budget; Lanning fires back

Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy and Oregon coach Dan Lanning are unexpectedly giving the Week 2 matchup between their teams some extra juice.

While speaking on his radio show Monday, Gundy said Oklahoma State spent “around $7 million” on its team over the past three years before referring to how much the Ducks have spent on their roster in recent years.

“I think Oregon spent close to $40 [million] last year alone,” Gundy said. “So, that was just one year. Now, I might be off a few million.”

Gundy made several other comments about Oregon’s resources — he said “it’ll cost a lot of money to keep” Ducks quarterback Dante Moore and that he believes Oregon’s budget should determine the programs they schedule outside of the Big Ten.

“Oregon is paying a lot, a lot of money for their team,” Gundy said. “From a nonconference standpoint, there’s coaches saying they should [play teams with similar budgets].”

On Monday night during his weekly news conference, Lanning responded.

“If you want to be a top-10 team in college football, you better be invested in winning. We spend to win,” Lanning said when asked about Gundy’s comments. “Some people save to have an excuse for why they don’t. … I can’t speak on their situation; I have no idea what they got in their pockets over there.”

Lanning added that he has “a lot of respect” for Gundy and praised how Gundy has consistently led his team to winning seasons over his 20-year tenure in Stillwater. Both teams are 1-0 this season; the Ducks are ranked No. 7 and are expected to be vying for a spot in the College Football Playoff.

“Over the last three to five years, they’ve elevated themselves. They have a lot of resources,” Gundy said. “They’ve got them stacked out there pretty good right now.”

Last year, Georgia coach Kirby Smart referenced Oregon’s resources, saying at SEC media days that he wishes he could get “some of that NIL money” that Oregon alum and Nike founder Phil Knight “has been sharing with Dan Lanning.”

“I think it’s impressive that guys like Kirby have been signing the No. 1 class in the nation without any NIL money this entire time,” Lanning said jokingly in response to Smart during Big Ten media days last year. “Obviously, Coach Smart took a little shot at us. But if you want to be a top-10 team in college football, you better have great support. We have that.”

While Smart’s and Lanning’s barbs had the tone of two coaches who have worked together (Lanning was Georgia’s defensive coordinator from 2019 to 2021), the back-and-forth with Gundy on Monday was unexpected.

“I’m sure UT-Martin maybe didn’t have as much as them last week, and they played,” Lanning said of Oklahoma State. “So, we’ll let it play out.”

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Belichick: Heels ‘better than what we were tonight’

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Belichick: Heels 'better than what we were tonight'

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — If Bill Belichick were still in New England, still helming a team he’d coached for a quarter-century, where he’d won six Super Bowls, he could have shrugged off Monday’s debacle against TCU as just a hiccup on a long road to somewhere better, answering his critics with his now ubiquitous retort: On to the next game.

In Chapel Hill on Monday, with a sell-out crowd eager to get its first glimpse of a new era of North Carolina football under the tutelage of one of the game’s all-time greats, what happened couldn’t be shrugged off so easily.

Belichick’s Tar Heels were embarrassed, with TCU rolling to a 48-14 win in which UNC didn’t simply look like the lesser team, but one that often appeared utterly unprepared for the moment.

“We’re better than what we were tonight but we have to go out there and show that and prove it,” Belichick said. “Nobody’s going to do it for us. We’re going to have to do it ourselves, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Through the first drive of Belichick’s tenure as a college coach, everything had gone right.

Crowds filled the bars and restaurants along Franklin Street in Chapel Hill hours before kickoff. A pregame concert, headlined by country star and UNC alum Chase Rice, set the stage for a star-studded event. Michael Jordan and Lawrence Taylor and Mia Hamm were all in attendance as the Belichick era at North Carolina finally kicked off.

And then the Tar Heels delivered a flawlessly executed 83-yard touchdown drive, and the packed house at Kenan Stadium exploded.

This was the dream when UNC shocked the college football world by landing Belichick, and suddenly Belichick’s promise of bringing a national championship to a program that hasn’t even won an ACC title in more than half a century felt entirely plausible.

Then TCU delivered one cold dose of reality after another, and by midway through the third quarter, after Devean Deal‘s scoop-and-score on a Gio Lopez fumble put the Horned Frogs up by 34, the once-frenetic stands emptied out and the hope for something magical in Chapel Hill seemed a distant memory.

“They out-played us, out-coached us, and they were just better than we were tonight,” Belichick said. “It’s all there was to it. They did a lot more things right than we did.”

Belichick turned over the bulk of North Carolina’s roster in one offseason, bringing in 70 new players — nearly half of whom arrived after spring practice. The transformation of the roster along with Belichick’s famously guarded approach to media meant few outside of North Carolina’s locker room had a clear vision of just what this squad would look like.

By the time the bludgeoning was over, the mantra from the Tar Heels’ perspective was that this performance hardly showcased what they’d seen on the practice field for the past six weeks.

“I thought we were prepared for the game,” backup quarterback Max Johnson said. “We prepared for a week and a half for TCU specifically, but we’ve been working on our fundamentals for a year now. We need to do a better job executing.”

After the opening touchdown drive, North Carolina went three-and-out on five of its next six drives. Lopez went more than two hours of real time between completions. UNC failed to convert its first six third-down tries, and Lopez threw a pick-six late in the first half that seemed to be the last gasp for the Tar Heels. The defense was equally catastrophic. TCU racked up 542 yards of total offense and ran for 258 yards, including a 75-yard scamper by Kevorian Barnes, and the Heels missed one tackle after another after another.

“Too many three-and-outs, too many long plays on defense, two turnovers for touchdowns. You can’t overcome that,” Belichick said. “We just can’t perform well doing some of the things we did. We’ve got to be better than that. We had too many self-inflicted wounds we have to eliminate before we can even worry about addressing our opponent.”

Johnson came on in relief of Lopez, who left after his sack-fumble with a lower back injury, and he delivered a touchdown drive that at least offered some spark of life for the Heels’ offense. Belichick said it was unclear whether Lopez would be able to play Saturday at Charlotte, but he left open the possibility that the QB competition could be re-opened.

“We’ll see how Gio is,” Belichick said. “Max came in after being off for a long time and hung in there and made some plays in a tough situation. We’ll take a look at it and see where things are at and go from there. It’s too early to tell now.”

Before the game, Belichick spent nearly a half-hour on the field watching both teams go through warm-ups. He chatted with dignitaries and appeared to bask in the moment, but the magic quickly evaporated.

The 48 points scored by TCU in Belichick’s first career game as a college coach are more than his teams allowed in any of his 333 NFL games, and for as much as he’d worked to sell North Carolina as “the 33rd NFL team,” Monday’s disaster felt like a reminder that, regardless of his success in the pros, this was new territory.

His response to the loss, however, was largely in line with what fans have come to expect of the understated coach — simple, succinct and emphatic.

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” he said. “We’ll get at it.”

For a fan base that had waited nine months for this moment, however, it could be harder to turn the page. Belichick never promised a quick fix, but there were reasonable assurances that this team would play with physicality and fundamentals, that UNC wouldn’t be out-coached or out-schemed.

By halftime Monday, the veil had been lifted. Belichick has six Super Bowl rings, but this was a bigger job than perhaps any he’d assumed before.

The excitement that reached its apex after the opening touchdown drive perfectly showcased what this experiment could look like. The question now is whether UNC’s reality will ever match the dream or if Belichick’s first drive as a college coach will be remembered as the pinnacle of his tenure here.

“Don’t lose hope,” Johnson said. “We’re going to continue to put our best foot forward, continue to work and trust in each other.”

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FSU freshman shot, in critical but stable condition

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FSU freshman shot, in critical but stable condition

Florida State freshman linebacker Ethan Pritchard was shot Sunday night and is hospitalized in critical but stable condition in intensive care at a Tallahassee-area hospital, the school said Monday.

According to the Gadsden County Sheriff’s Office, Pritchard was inside a vehicle outside an apartment building when the shooting happened Sunday night in Havana, Florida, which is about 16 miles from Tallahassee, near the Georgia state line. An investigation into the shooting is ongoing.

In its statement, Florida State said Pritchard was visiting family at the time he was shot.

“The Pritchard family is thankful for the support from so many people, as well as the care from first responders and medical professionals, and asks that their privacy be respected at this time,” the FSU statement said.

Pritchard, who is from Sanford, Florida, enrolled at Florida State in January but did not play in the Seminoles’ season-opening victory against Alabama.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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