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Why Jake Oettinger Put ‘Doodle’ on 4 Nations Gear

Feb 29, 2024; Dallas, Texas, USA; Dallas Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger (29) new mask on display when playing the Winnipeg Jets at the American Airlines Center. Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

Hockey players are not always known for their creativity when it comes to nicknames. The standard is to shorten the last name and add one of a “y”, “s”, or “er” sound to the end. Occasionally, you end up with a unique one, but more often than not, the majority of a hockey locker room will reflect the usual monikers following that rule.

With a last name like Jake Oettinger has, his teammates could have called him any of those: Otty, Otts, Otter. When you ask the Dallas Stars goaltender about his nickname, you’d be surprised to learn that Otter is relatively new.

“I don’t really know [when it started], honestly. I don’t even think in college it was Otter. I think that’s once I got here, it became Otter,” he said. “I think the fans just kind of ran with that, and then after that, it turned into a thing of its own.”

“My mask guy put an otter on there after he heard that and it’s been pretty fun since then,” he said. At the start of the 2021-22 season, Oettinger’s mask designer, David Gunnarsson (aka Dave Art on Instagram) put an otter on the goaltender’s mask design for the first time. It’s been a staple component of every subsequent design since, whether it be as a sheriff or as a golfer or driving a golf cart with friends or wearing a cowboy hat or as a little head pop-up over a Stars logo.

Later that season, Oettinger got another piece of creative artwork with an otter theme when the Dallas Stars social media manager/content creator/team photographer (and likely several other hats on any given day) Courtney Kramer was at home watching the team play a road game against the Colorado Avalanche on February 15, 2022. That’s when she had some time to finish an idea she had started doodling – a little otter character.

As the game that night progressed, Oettinger faced 47 total shots on goal. He turned away 46 of them. Kramer posted on the team’s social media for the first time the otter doodle character with the simple caption “Jake Otter.”

It was one of the first moments in the NHL where Oettinger turned people’s heads and started to mark him as a goalie to watch. That spring, he solidified his place in the echelon of new young elite goaltenders in the league with a Game 7 performance for the ages in which he faced 67 shots on goal from the Calgary Flames and gave the Stars a chance to win the series by keeping the team in it to force overtime before falling just short of the win.

This season, with Team USA slated to face Canada, Finland, and Sweden in an in-season best-on-best tournament at the 4 Nations Face-Off, Oettinger was named as one of the three goaltenders for the American team. It’s a precursor to the Winter Olympics that will take place next season, and those making the rosters for their respective countries are widely considered frontrunners to represent their teams on the world stage for that tournament as well.

The 4 Nations tournament means another opportunity to show his personality with his mask design, something Oettinger said features “a pretty cool thing…for the otter, too.” But that’s not the only place where the otter will appear.

Kramer described seeing her original artwork, which has become a cult favorite among Stars fans, on Oettinger’s pads as “one of the greatest honors of my life.”

“Courtney came up with such a cool little thing. She created a really cool [character] and I thought it would be cool for everyone to have that on there. It turned out really good,” Oettinger said. “For me it’s nothing [to include the artwork], but it meant a lot to her which is cool. She’s such a big part of this team and does so much behind the scenes. So I wanted to put her on the forefront. It meant a lot to me how much it meant to her. Just happy it’ll be on there when I represent on the big stage.”

Including the little otter doodle on his pads doesn’t just recognize someone that has helped him create a personal brand that his family and fans connect with. It also represents a special piece of his identity when he represents his country.

“I wanted to have a little bit of the Dallas Stars a part of me when I’m playing for USA,” Oettinger said. “You want to make the fans here and the organization proud. My teammates are one of the main reasons I made that team, just how good they’ve been in front of me and helped me have a great year so far. They helped me make that team.

“I want to make them proud and hopefully they’ll be pulling for me, and I can make the city and the fans here proud.”

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