It’s not often a coach goes 149-68-29, sports the best points percentage in the NHL, goes to the conference finals all three seasons with the team and gets fired for it.
That’s what happened with the Dallas Stars and Pete DeBoer.
Things ended in messy fashion for DeBoer in Dallas. The Stars were eliminated by the Oilers in just five games in the Western Conference final, falling one round short of the Stanley Cup Final for the third consecutive year. In the 6-3 Game 5 loss, DeBoer stunningly benched Stars goalie Jake Oettinger in the first period after Dallas fell behind 2-0 in the first seven minutes of the game on two shots that Oettinger hardly had a chance to stop.
The tension that moment created ultimately played a role in why the Stars parted ways with DeBoer, according to Dallas GM Jim Nill. For the first time since being fired by the Stars, DeBoer addressed the Oettinger situation in an exclusive sitdown with NHL.com.
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“Listen, we were all to blame for coming up short again, and it starts with me,” DeBoer said. “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 [Oettinger], 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.”
Oettinger was informed of DeBoer’s comments and was glad DeBoer admitted he wished he handled things differently. The Stars goalie had previously called his benching “embarrassing.”
“I mean, I think I feel like he hit the nail on the head,” Oettinger said. “I agree with what his reflection was. I’m glad he said what he said.”
Beyond his reflection of his postgame comments, DeBoer explained why he benched Oettinger. When Dallas fell behind 2-0, DeBoer called a timeout, called the team over and ripped into his players.
“The first 30 seconds of that timeout was me blasting our team and, if I could have, I would have blasted myself and our coaches too,” DeBoer explained. “I mean, you’re mad and disappointed in that moment, at everything, at the team, at the start, at the goalie, at yourself, at everybody. Why are we in this spot? You know, we have this opportunity and we’re in this spot. So, it’s a scattergun of anger, of bitterness.
“Still, I felt our group had got to the same spot three years in a row and we needed a shock to the system at that point. And there was nothing off limits at that point to try and shock us back. I felt our group had been to this point for a third year in a row and you could tell that in the group, there was a defeatism to them. You could feel it. I could feel it on the bench. And so, at that point, you use every tool you have in your box in order to try and shock them out of that.”
The move did not spark a miraculous comeback, Dallas was eliminated and the Stars felt a new voice was needed in the locker room to get over the hump and get back to the Stanley Cup Final.
The Stars return most of their core from last year’s playoff run, but this time will have a new voice in Glen Gulutzan behind the bench. Dallas is hoping Gulutzan can push the team to the next level that DeBoer couldn’t quite pull off in his three seasons.
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