Pete DeBoer is back in Dallas this weekend, coaching against the Stars for the first time since the team fired him last season following a turbulent exit from the Western Conference Final.
DeBoer, now leading the New York Islanders, kept his comments measured ahead of Sunday’s game, the first stop on a three-game Islanders road trip.
“I’ve done this a few times [in] a few different spots,” DeBoer told reporters after Saturday’s practice. “Your first game back’s always a little special. Just because a lot of people you spend time with and work with and players. So it was a great chapter in my coaching career. I’m now coaching the Islanders and focused on that.”
DeBoer led Dallas to the Western Conference Final in three straight seasons, but his final run with the team ended badly. With the Stars trailing the Oilers 3-1 in that series and down 2-0 on the first two shots of Game 5, DeBoer pulled starting goaltender Jake Oettinger in favor of Casey DeSmith. Dallas lost the game anyway, and DeBoer’s postgame comments put blame on Oettinger’s recent playoff performance.
“We had talked endlessly in this series about trying to play with a lead, and obviously, we were in a 2-0 hole right away,” DeBoer said at the time. “I didn’t take that lightly, and I didn’t blame it all on Jake, but the reality is: If you go back to last year’s playoffs, he’s lost six of seven games to Edmonton. And we gave up two goals on two shots in an elimination game. So it was partly to spark our team and wake them up. And partly knowing that status quo had not been working and that’s a pretty big sample size.”
Dallas fired DeBoer less than a week later. In a September 2025 interview with NHL.com, DeBoer said he regretted the remarks, noting he “should have redirected the topic to reflect that this wasn’t about [Oettinger], this was about all of us.”
Asked Saturday whether he had crossed paths with Oettinger at the Winter Olympics in Milan last February, DeBoer kept it brief: “I did run into Jake and chatted with Jake; yep.”
DeBoer, who was out of coaching until the Islanders hired him with four games left in last season, said he ran into many familiar faces in Italy beyond Oettinger.
“You’re running into all kinds of players. I had [Marek] Zidlicky, who I coached at the New Jersey Devils; he was coaching with the Czech team. I ran into him in the meal room,” DeBoer said. “I ran into all the Finns, obviously, that I coached in Dallas. We had a big contingent of Finnish players that I really enjoyed working with. So I ran into all of them. Just about everybody.”
Since taking over in New York, DeBoer has the Islanders playing well. The team entered the Dallas trip having picked up points in five straight games.
“I think right now, you just keep building your game,” Islanders defenseman Ryan Pulock said. “I think we keep working on all our little details in practice, talking about them daily. You’re starting to see it in game: limiting chances, limiting time spent in our own zone, doing a good job in the neutral [zone].”
“We played some skilled, fast teams and we’ve controlled the neutral zone pretty well,” Pulock added. “I think what he brings in is his structure, his leadership. Everything that he preaches, guys listen. It’s really starting to show in the way we’re playing.”
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