DENVER — The Dallas Stars got elite goaltending from Jake Oettinger and some timely goals in a 5-4 shootout win against the Colorado Avalanche at Ball Arena on Saturday.

Pure chaos, hilarity, and a lead?

As Stars coach Glen Gulutzan has said repeatedly, the first 10 or so games of the regular season are full of rested players and chaos.

After four periods of the season, there is no arguing that.

The first period in Denver was chaos at its peak. Dallas took on water, being outshot 9-1 at one point and just trying to survive. There was a big hit on the wall by Roope Hintz. Nathan MacKinnon somehow shot a puck from behind Oettinger and hit the opposite post. Lian Bichsel turned a puck over, then dove to block the shot and make up for it. It was a lot of that.

Speaking of Oettinger, he was excellent in the first. Not only did he stop all 14 Colorado shots, but he was seeing the puck very well through traffic and holding onto rebounds. Five or six times at least, Oettinger looked through a crowd to make a really good save and either punched the rebound to the corner or swallowed it up in the belly. As we talked about after Thursday’s game, it’s easy to see when Oettinger is on his game and when he is not. All of the above says he absolutely is so far against his old pal Scott Wedgewood.

Oh, Scott Wedgewood. He had a great period too, only allowing one goal on a nifty passing play that led to Thomas Harley’s blast from the top of the circle. In four periods, Nils Lundkvist has a goal and three points. Nice.

But that wasn’t the highlight, at least to me. The highlight was what happened with Jason Robertson earlier in the period.

As the Stars tried to enter the zone, the puck bounced to Robertson, who casually chipped it along the wall into the Colorado zone. The puck hit a stanchion in the boards, took a hard right, and snuck into the far side of the yawning net while Wedgewood stood defeated behind it. It was hysterical.

And now it’s even funnier to Wedgewood because the Stars were offside and the goal was waived off.

Also, this:

Hryckowian AGAIN & some goals, too

Justin Hryckowian is doing everything he can to prove he belongs on this team. While that has not meant any offense in the first six periods, it has meant plenty of physical stuff.

Hryckowian dropped the gloves with Ross Colton. That, in itself, is cool. But when you add to it the hit from behind Colton delivered on Miro Heiskanen, it’s coolio (speaking of Coolio, Colorado walks out before the game to Gangsta’s Paradise, which is awesome). Sometimes, you can’t plan your segways; they just happen.

I think back to the playoffs when Darnell Nurse slashed Roope Hintz. There were plenty more instances, but that was the most notable and got the most attention. What got even more attention was the lack of response from Dallas. Nobody stood up for Hintz. Nobody got retribution later in the game or even the series. I mean, the Stars even stood and watched Evan Bouchard slash Hintz on the same foot in Edmonton.

If it wasn’t Jamie Benn or sometimes Lian Bichsel, Dallas had nobody to protect its star players. They really haven’t had anyone to turn the tide when they were getting outplayed, or bring some energy with a fight or big hit. Bichsel does bring the latter.

Hryckowian does that. He has proven it already on multiple occasions, and I am all about it.

Not sure how, but Dallas finished the second period with a 3-2 lead. After Colorado stormed ahead 2-1 and looked to be dominating play, Dallas started to find its game. The Stars had a few good shifts, creating pressure and coming very close to tying the game. Then, Nathan Bastian did exactly that.

Gulutzan shuffled his lines again in the second, moving Robertson to the top line with Hintz and Rantanen and slotting in Hryckowian on the left side of Matt Duchene and Tyler Seguin. And guess what? It worked.

If Dallas is going to hold onto this lead, they absolutely have to clean up their defensive-zone coverage. Far too many open Avs and sloppy turnovers putting pressure on Oettinger.

Nils Lundkvist give & take, a lot of Jake Oettinger

Did anything even happen in the third period? Oh yeah. A million goals and a million saves.

Look, there is no sugarcoating it… the Stars were completely outplayed in this game. If it were not for Oettinger’s heroics, especially late, they probably would have flown home with a 7-3 loss. And Gulutzan was pretty honest about that…

“We learned we have to get better,” Gulutzan said. “We learned we have to get better. We were outplayed.”

I will write more about this on Monday, but let’s talk about Nils Lundkvist for a second.

The Stars, as a whole, have been playing the same way for years. Changes take time to adjust to. We have seen that over the first two games. Dallas looks to be stuck between decisions at times, especially in their own end. That split second of hesitation is all a player like MacKinnon needs to make you pay.

Under Gulutzan, the Stars are encouraged to read and react. Play hockey. Right now, they are thinking a lot.

Lundkvist is a great example of that. The 25-year-old has looked excellent offensively. Defensively, he has been up and down. Tonight, he was on the ice for each of the first three Avs goals. Not only was he on the ice, but he was the defenseman between the passer and the eventual goal scorer. It looked like Lundkvist made a good read and saw the play developing, but he either didn’t react quickly enough or he whiffed on the cross-ice pass.

Here are the three goals:

I think Lundkvist and the rest of this group are only going to get better. Have a bit of patience.

How about Oettinger, though? How many glove saves did he make sprawling to his left? At least a million, right?

When Oettinger is on his game, there are not many better goalies in the world. They needed him tonight to get any points out of this game, and he delivered.

Gulutzan didn’t hesitate postgame to give credit where credit is due.

“I don’t know if I’ve seen a goalie performance like that since Jake Oettinger against Calgary (in 2022),” Gulutzan said. “He stole us the game, plain and simple. He stole us the game.”

Rantanen also scored the shootout winner… which is just perfect. Good night.

Quotable

Stars coach Glen Gulutzan

“As a coach, though, this one leaves a little sour taste in your mouth. I’m trying to look at it this way… There’s growth that has to take place here. You can’t be in your zone that much. Basically, we lost a lot of battles, a lot of battles. When you do that, there’s no system that can protect you... This is a growth game, and we need to grow from it.”