Former Dallas Stars head coach Pete DeBoer is setting the record straight on his fallout with goaltender Jake Oettinger during last season’s playoffs.

DeBoer pulled Oettinger, who is signed through 2033 at an $8.25 million cap hit, just over seven minutes into the team’s Western Conference Final Game 5 loss to Edmonton Oilers that ended their season.

DeBoer said postgame that puling Oettinger after he allowed two goals on the first two shots he faced was done to spark his team, but then added “the reality is we go back to last year’s playoffs, [Oettinger] has lost six of seven games to Edmonton.”

DeBoer was fired a week after the playoff elimination, with Stars general manager Jim Nill admitting “the events that took place, that’s a component of it.”

“Listen, we were all to blame for coming up short again, and it starts with me,” DeBoer told NHL.com’s Mike Zeisberger as he reflected on the incident. “It was on me, it was on all the coaches, it was on all the players, it was on the organization as a whole. We all created the disappointment. We were all to blame, not just one guy.

“When all the questions at the postgame press conference were about Jake, I should have redirected the topic to reflect that this wasn’t just about him, this was about all of us. We – and I stress the word ‘we’ – did not get the job done. We were on a run in which we’d lost six of our past seven games against Edmonton in the third round dating back to 2024. In one of my answers, I said he’d lost six of seven to them. But it wasn’t just him. It was all of us. That’s not on just one guy. I should have made that clearer.”

DeBoer noted that he does not regret pulling Oettinger, though, as he tried to find a way to save the team’s season. Backup Casey DeSmith allowed a goal on the first shot he faced and stopped 17 of the 20 shots he faced in the 6-3 loss.

Oettinger, 26, was 9-8 in the playoffs this past spring with a .905 save percentage and a 2.82 goals-against average. He went 36-18-4 with a .909 save percentage in the regular season to backstop Dallas to a fourth straight playoff appearance.

“I mean, I think I feel like he hit the nail on the head,” Oettinger told Zeisberger when informed of DeBoer’s comments . “I agree with what his reflection was.

“I’m glad he said what he said.”

The Stars, who also lost to the Oilers in the 2024 Western Conference Final and fell to the Vegas Golden Knights in the 2023 WCF, enter this season with Glen Gulutzan behind the bench as their new head coach. It’s Gulutzan’s second time around with the Stars, having coached the team for two years from 2011-2013. He also spent two years as head coach of the Calgary Flames from 2016-18 and was with the Oilers as an assistant coach for the past seven seasons.

DeBoer is a coaching free agent, though he will hold a role on Jon Cooper’s staff for Team Canada at the Olympics. Should an NHL job open up, the 57-year-old said he’s ready to jump back in.

“I’m very confident with my ability to come in and get a team on the same page and play the right way and being able to win in the playoffs,” he said. “Again, my confidence in being able to do that is really high.

“Am I thinking about that right now? No, I’m thinking about the Olympics right now. But that doesn’t mean if the phone rings, that a switch doesn’t go off in my head and that changes.”

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