Quoting: Alfie11
I’m not sure why you’re calling it a “farce” or “struggled and only won by one goal.” Oettinger had over ELEVEN goals saved above expected (literally more than 1.5 goals PER GAME). If you had average goaltending instead of literally one of the greatest single series goaltending performances of all time that series would not have been close. The Flames outshot the Stars by 6+ SOG in 6/7 games, including 4 times by double digits, and had the much better chances, at least by the highlight packs I’ve watched (on vaca so missed the games, but like the Stars highlights included blocked point shots lmao, the Flames were all extremely dangerous scoring chances), which is backed up by the xG% (Flames had the better 5v5 xG% in every game except for game 1, and according to money puck, game 6 was the only game Dallas “deserved to win”). Oettinger was the ONLY reason that series was close, and he deserves all the props in the world for that. If there was a round 1 Conn Smythe he’d win it unanimously. But the rest of the series wasn’t particularly close, the Flames were consistently outplaying the Stars. Now I just have to hope that Smith doesn’t keep up being #2 in the playoffs in GSAX lmaooooo, so much for the Flames having the easiest path, they’re having to play the two hottest goalies, which is probably worse than playing a good team in the playoffs.
Also I saw that Hintz wasn’t playing, but neither was Tanev and he’s our most important D (best defensive D) so both teams were missing a key player to injury.
And the Flames/Oilers struggles were different. The Flames dominated, and struggled to beat the best goalie in the playoffs so far. The Oilers got the 2nd best goaltending in the playoffs and still struggled to beat the worst team in the playoffs, who were missing their #1 D and 3rd best goal scorer.
I’m more frustrated about the result than the performance.
Stars were getting outplayed drastically almost every game, not just by shots and quality shots, but by zone possession. Calgary was almost always in the Stars end and had a boat load of good opportunities, when Dallas was in Calgary’s end (which wasn’t that much), they had almost no good chances (pretty much dump and chase, puck in the corner kind of sh*t). If it wasn’t of Oettinger the series would’ve probably finished in 5 or 4 for the Flames. But…
The series was won off of 1 goal in OT, and there were a lot of questionable calls that could’ve impacted Dallas getting that 1 goal instead of Calgary. For an example, all things were rolling in that OT before the refs call a penalty on Segs for hooking (understandable call, but it’s OT, shouldn’t have been a penalty), after Calgary’s PP finished there were at least 2 instances that a Calgary player hooked a Stars player worst than Segs did and nothing was called. That could’ve changed the outcome of the game, because if the Segs call wasn’t called Dallas would’ve continued having that zone possession time and if all of those would’ve been called, Dallas would’ve been on a roll. Calgary was on a roll cuz of that PP and finished the game not long after.
And that’s just 1 thing that comes to mind.
TL;DR: Flames were the significantly better team, but Otter saved us. I’m salty since the result was so close and the refs were dumb, and in reason could’ve costed us the series (that we didn’t deserve to win anyways).