DALLAS — The day before a sport in which he’s set to be the important character, Islanders head coach Pete DeBoer was sometimes 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 career where you are employed to be fired.
DeBoer’s exit from Texas might be described as memorable for the fallacious causes.
After teaching the Stars to the Western Conference Final for the third time in as many seasons, DeBoer’s membership fell behind 3-1 in the collection and 2-0 on the Oilers’ first two pictures of Game 5, prompting him to shockingly pull star goaltender Jake Oettinger for Casey DeSmith.
The Stars lost anyway. In the sport’s quick 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 informed 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.
New York Islanders head coach Pete DeBoer watches play against the Chicago Blackhawks during the third interval of an NHL hockey sport at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., Thursday, Oct. 8, 2026. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect
Having already acknowledged remorse about these feedback in a September 2025 interview with the NHL’s web site, 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 stunning that DeBoer didn’t need 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 employed him with 4 video games to go last season, that would have been the only instantly apparent alternative for the two to converse. DeBoer didn’t go into any of that element, but Oettinger was far from the only one of his former gamers 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 journey that begins Sunday against the Stars, the Isles had factors in 5 in a row and seemed like a noticeably more detailed staff under his tutelage.
“I think right now, you just keep building your game,” Ryan Pulock said. “I think we hold working on all our little particulars in observe, speaking about them each day. You’re beginning to see it in sport: limiting probabilities, limiting time spent in our own zone, doing a good job in the impartial [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.”