Dallas Stars head coach Peter DeBoer made the stunning determination to tug his beginning goalie, Jake Oettinger, simply seven minutes into Thursday’s Sport 5 of the Western Convention Ultimate. It didn’t present the specified spark because the Stars’ season got here to an finish with a 6-3 loss, with backup Casey DeSmith permitting three targets in reduction of Oettinger.
The choice was controversial sufficient within the second. It grew to become downright baffling after the sport when DeBoer seemingly threw his beginning goalie beneath the bus and put the majority of the blame on him.
The important thing a part of that reply comes on the very finish.
“I did not blame all of it on Jake. However the actuality is, if you happen to return to final 12 months’s playoffs he is misplaced six of seven video games to Edmonton. We gave up two targets on two pictures in an elimination recreation. It was partly to spark our group and wake them up, and partly and realizing the established order had not been working. It is a reasonably large pattern dimension.”
That may be a heck of a quote from an NHL head coach simply minutes after their group will get eradicated for the second 12 months in a row within the Western Convention Ultimate.
Saying you are not blaming all of it on the goalie, after which declaring that the goalie wasn’t doing sufficient to beat the group that eradicated you two years in a row is a tough look. Particularly when DeBoer has had some problematic historical past with goalies.
His group in Vegas reached a boiling level when he changed Marc-Andre Fleury with Robin Lehner, leading to Fleury’s agent posting a photoshopped image of Fleury with a sword with DeBoer’s identify shoved by his again.
And whereas Oettinger has struggled the previous two sequence towards Edmonton, it is nonetheless lower than 14 complete video games, which isn’t an enormous pattern dimension. And so long as we’re speaking about pattern sizes, DeBoer has constantly hit a ceiling within the Convention Ultimate sequence, dropping six of them in his head-coaching profession with three completely different groups (Sharks, Golden Knights, Stars) and 4 completely different beginning goalies, in addition to two Stanley Cup Finals (Devils, Sharks).
Possibly it is not the goalie that’s holding DeBoer again.
The Oilers have been clearly the higher group on this sequence, and so they have a professional shot to win all of it this season. You continue to need to go towards them along with your greatest goalie. DeBoer didn’t give the Stars the chance to do this in an elimination recreation.
