Peter DeBoer speaks out after being fired over Jake Oettinger comments.

The National Hockey League regular season is right around the corner but in an usual turn of events, veteran head coach Peter DeBoer will not be behind the bench of an NHL team when the season gets underway. DeBoer was unceremoniously let go by the Dallas Stars this summer after making some highly controversial comments about Stars goaltender Jake Oettinger following a second straight loss in as many seasons to the Edmonton Oilers in the Western Conference Final.

Many fans felt that DeBoer had unfairly maligned Oettinger, throwing his goaltender under the bus if you will, and it seems that after having been given some time to reflect that DeBoer himself agrees with that sentiment.

"Listen, we were all to blame for coming up short again, and it starts with me," said DeBoer as per NHL.com. "It was on me, it was on all the coaches, it was on all the players, it was on the organization as a whole. We all created the disappointment. We were all to blame, not just one guy."

While it's true that many of the questions that were directed at DeBoer after the Stars were eliminated were about Oettinger's play, the former head coach says that it was his responsibility to move the conversation in a different direction. A responsibility that DeBoer now admits that he didn't handle well enough at the time.

"When all the questions at the postgame press conference were about Jake, I should have redirected the topic to reflect that this wasn’t just about him, this was about all of us. We -- and I stress the word 'we' -- did not get the job done. We were on a run in which we’d lost six of our past seven games against Edmonton in the third round dating back to 2024. In one of my answers, I said he’d lost six of seven to them. But it wasn’t just him. It was all of us. That’s not on just one guy. I should have made that clearer."

Deboer is no stranger to controversy when it comes to how he manages his players, specifically goaltenders, with the head coach being a part of one of the most infamous goalie controversies in recent memory. During his tenure with the Vegas Golden Knights, goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury expressed his own issues with DeBoer through a tweet sent out by his agent.

In spite of that DeBoer has had tremendous success over the years at the NHL level and I expect that, should a contending team fail to deliver on expectations during the 2025-26 NHL regular season, it won't be long before we see DeBoer back behind the bench of another NHL team.