Jake Oettinger was unavailable for the Dallas Stars for their game against the St. Louis Blues at Enterprise Center on Saturday (8 p.m. ET; BSMW, TXA 21) because of a lower-body injury.
Oettinger sustained the injury in the first period of the Stars’ 5-4 win against the Ottawa Senators at American Airlines Center in Dallas on Friday. The goalie was helped off the ice and went to the dressing room at 8:03, replaced by Scott Wedgewood. Oettinger appeared to be in discomfort after stretching out his right pad to try to stop a shot attempt.
With Oettinger unable to travel, the Stars dressed Joe O’Brien as their emergency backup goalie.
O’Brien, 28, played college hockey at Niagara University (2015-19) and was part of the St. Louis AAA Blues U-16 and U-18 program. One of his coaches was former NHL defenseman Al MacInnis, who is a senior adviser to Blues general manager Doug Armstrong.
He was 3-11-2 with a 4.07 goals-against average and .876 save percentage in 26 games through four seasons at Niagara, located in Lewiston, New York.
O'Brien, who is from Clayton, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, was working at his family restaurant, OB Clark in Brentwood, Missouri, when he got a text from Blues assistant general manager Ryan Miller explaining the situation with the Stars.
"You never like to see something like this kind of occur," O'Brien said Saturday. "I was setting the games (on televisions) at the restaurant last night and I put the Stars game on, and it was right when Oettinger was going off the ice with something. I really didn't even put two and two together with him coming to St. Louis the next night.
"I was downstairs changing kegs, and I got a text from Blues assistant GM Ryan Miller saying, 'Hey, here's the situation. We'll just kind of keep you updated. They'll probably need you for the morning skate. From there, we'll kind of see,' and after that, [I] got a phone call from Dallas' assistant GM and I just had to kind of be here and we'll kind of take it from there."
