A look at Jake Oettinger's struggles this season

Let's look at what is and isn't going right for the Stars goalie.

One of my gigs, in addition to maintaining this fine site, is acting as the editor for my good friend Bob Sturm over at Sturm Stack.

Bob was asked about Jake Oettinger in his weekly mailbag, which ran on Saturday.

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Here is part of Bob’s answer on the Oettinger question.

Now, a quick confession: I try to learn everything about sports I can learn, but evaluating NHL goaltenders for me is a blind spot. I think it is a team sport so when my goalie gets lit up I usually blame his defensemen. But I don’t know enough about the fundamentals of the position to fully know that a goalie is blameless or not. So, in short, I just want to be forthcoming about this.

That said, I believe he is a good goalie, but he needs to be a better one between here and June if the Stars even get out of a very difficult Round 1.

Bob’s answer is a good one, but it also sent me down a wormhole.

For starters, I do know enough about the fundamentals of the position and still practice the dark arts at a beer league level. I also have access to NHL goalie coaches and data, which we can use to go deeper on this process.

So, let’s talk about Jake Oettinger and where he fits in the great NHL goalie universe.

I started this exercise by letting the people discuss it, in a very non-scientific way — a Twitter poll.

Now, my inherent bias is showing simply in the poll options.

I believe Jake Oettinger is a top-15 goalie in the NHL. If I was building an NHL franchise and had my pick of goalies, he would be in the first 15 taken.

I also believe goaltending is incredibly fickle, perhaps the most fickle position in sports.

It’s why in 1990s we had a guy named Jim Carey — not the actor — win the Vezina Trophy and end up in the AHL two seasons later. It’s why Andrew Raycroft went from Calder Trophy winner to largely forgotten, and in a smaller sample size Sergei Bobrovsky went from unplayable in the regular season to nearly winning the Conn Smythe on a runner-up in the Stanley Cup Finals.

A good goalie today, could be a bad goalie tomorrow. It is one of the most frustrating and mentally taxing positions in sports — on both fans and the combatants.

So for Oettinger, we should address the massive bias as we enter the room.

If we’re starting an NHL franchise today, and it was a goalie draft. My top-10 draft order would be as follows.