Apparently Losing 3 Straight Conference Finals Is The Limit, As The Dallas Stars Have Fired Pete DeBoer
Richard Rodriguez. Getty Images.Pete DeBoer sounded like a man who was ready to fire himself after the Stars' game 5 loss to Edmonton in the Western Conference Finals. He said absolutely everything you could say to lose the locker room. He deflected blame off of himself, he directly blamed the goalie, and he just looked like he was defeated and out of answers.
That was 3 straight trips to the Western Conference Finals with the Dallas Stars, and 3 straight losses in those series. In total, it's 6 losses in the Western Conference Finals in the past 7 seasons for Pete DeBoer. He lost the WCF in 2019 with San Jose. He lost the WCF in 2020 and 2021 with Vegas. And now he's lost the WCF in 2023, 2024, and 2025 with Dallas. He's taken 2 organizations to the Stanley Cup Final--New Jersey in 2012, and San Jose in 2016--and he's lost both of them.
Pete DeBoer is out of shits to give. For a team like the Dallas Stars, who feel like they're as close as you could possibly get to winning a Cup, you can't get over that hump with a coach who basically told you all to fuck off.
So now the Dallas Stars have the only coaching vacancy in the league. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. They missed out on the first round of hires, but now they get to go out and get whoever they want who is available. And for Pete DeBoer, he gets to hang around for a few months and wait for somebody else to get fired next year. The perfect scenario here is that the Dallas Stars find the right guy to get them over the hump and into the Cup Final next year, meanwhile you have Pete DeBoer getting hired by an underachieving Eastern Conference team early in the year and he turns them around in time to make it to the Cup Final. The Dallas Stars are you 2026 Stanley Cup Champions after ruining Pete DeBoer's life once more.