Oh, you think Thibs has a gripe? Pete DeBoer has made six out of the last seven conference finals, with three different teams—and been fired by them all, after the Stars announced today that they think they can do better. Perhaps even more impressive than DeBoer's run is that his firing isn't a surprise in the least.
“After careful consideration, we believe that a new voice is needed in our locker room to push us closer to our goal of winning the Stanley Cup,” Dallas GM Jim Nill said in a statement, a week after the Stars bowed out in a perfunctory five games to the Oilers. It's the rare team statement that says exactly what it means: DeBoer lost the room. Even a well-respected coach's voice stops having an effect when Sisyphus's boulder rolls back down the hill for the third season in a row.
DeBoer certainly didn't do himself any favors with his comments on goalie Jake Oettinger, who he yanked early in Game 5. "The reality is, if you go back to last year's playoffs, he's lost six of seven games to Edmonton," DeBoer said. "...[K]nowing that status quo had not been working, and that's a pretty big sample size." Given that the Stars very much hope to be in the playoffs again, and could easily face Edmonton, DeBoer might as well have said It's me or him, one's gotta go, and he was never going to win that battle.
Stud goalies are as invaluable as coaches are replaceable. DeBoer has now gotten canned three separate times by teams he'd led to the final four; the Stars hope to follow the path of the Golden Knights, who won the Cup the year after firing him, rather than that of the Sharks, who are still in the toilet. It's a cold world, where a guy can have so much regular-season success, and win two rounds year after year, and it's just not good enough, but Dallas believes they should be even better, and it's hard to argue with that.
Meanwhile, there's now a veteran coach available for any team that would like to go to the Western Conference final, and no further.
