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DALLAS — The day before a game in which he’s set to be the main character, Islanders head coach Pete DeBoer was typically understated regarding his own return here.
“I’ve done this a few times [in] a few different spots,” DeBoer said after the Islanders practiced Saturday. “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.”
Some exits are smoother than others, though, even in a profession where you are hired to be fired.
DeBoer’s exit from Texas might be described as memorable for the wrong reasons.
After coaching the Stars to the Western Conference Final for the third time in as many seasons, DeBoer’s club fell behind 3-1 in the series and 2-0 on the Oilers’ first two shots of Game 5, prompting him to shockingly pull star goaltender Jake Oettinger for Casey DeSmith.
The Stars lost anyway. In the game’s immediate aftermath, DeBoer, in essence, tossed Oettinger under the bus.
“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 told reporters. “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.”
Less than a week later, the Stars let go of DeBoer.
Having already stated regret about those comments in a September 2025 interview with the NHL’s website, saying he “should have redirected the topic to reflect that this wasn’t about [Oettinger], this was about all of us,” when questions about the goaltender came up, it’s not altogether shocking that DeBoer didn’t want to get into it Saturday.
Did he run into Oettinger when both were in Milan for the Olympic Games last February?
“I did run into Jake and chatted with Jake; yep,” DeBoer said.
Having been out of the league until the Islanders hired him with four games to go last season, that would have been the only immediately obvious opportunity for the two to speak. DeBoer didn’t go into any of that detail, but Oettinger was far from the only one of his former players he ran into while in Italy.
“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.”
With the Islanders, DeBoer so far is thriving. Heading into a three-game trip that begins Sunday against the Stars, the Isles had points in five in a row and looked like a noticeably more detailed team under his tutelage.
“I think right now, you just keep building your game,” 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. 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.”