How the Stars can avoid elimination in Game 5

The Dallas Stars find themselves down 3-1 in their Conference Final series to the Edmonton Oilers, and are on the brink of being eliminated in the third round for the third straight season. The series has been pretty much all Oilers, as outside of five straight goals in the third period of Game 1 to win that game, Edmonton has outscored Dallas 16-3 in the series.

Frank Seravalli talked about the Stars and what they needed to do to get back in this series on Daily Faceoff Live.

Frank Seravalli: First off, now the focus is on [the Stars] penalty kill to make things happen because the Oilers have taken advantage of that of late. To think the way this series started, and giving up three power play goals in succession that we’d be four games in and the Oilers would already have the advantage in that category is kind of shocking.

But really, a lot of it just comes down to: you need a Jake Oettinger game. You need to be able to hang your hat on an effort from Jake Oettinger that not just gives your team a chance to win, but really makes a definitive statement that he can have a big bounce back, because he’s been very average, if not below average, in the series.

And yeah, there’s so many other facets to Dallas’ game that you could key in on or zone in on, but that’s the easiest and most simple form. Does their depth need to play better and score? Of course it does. Where has it been? Hello, Mikko Rantanen, you’ve been outscored by Logan Stankoven in this Conference Final round, and the Canes are now out.

So to that end, there’s a lot of things. Any one of those things in one game might be enough. But the Oettinger route, for the good of the Dallas Stars chances to get back into the series and win it, it won’t be possible unless he starts to string it together.

You can watch the full episode here…