By pulling Jake Oettinger, Pete DeBoer tried to spark the Stars. Instead, he burned them

New York Times

a day ago

DALLAS — Casey DeSmith, his legs already splayed in the crease, was fighting with all he had. There was no way he was giving up on this play, no matter how many Edmonton Oilers bodies were converging on him. With Adam Henrique on the doorstep, DeSmith made a dramatic and downright balletic move to stop him — flinging his left arm behind him for balance and furiously stabbing the right side of the crease with his right pad. His head was on a swivel, looking left and right, right and left.
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DeSmith was battling, man.
One problem: Jeff Skinner's shot from the other side already had skittered between DeSmith's knees, ticked off his inner right thigh, and found the back of the net. Like a full second earlier. Hell, Skinner already was celebrating while DeSmith was kicking at a phantom puck.
So, yeah, benching Jake Oettinger seven minutes into an elimination game didn't work.
Dallas Stars coach Pete DeBoer panicked. There's no other way to look at this. Oettinger gave up two goals on the first two shots he faced in Game 5 of the Western Conference final on Thursday, and DeBoer — staring down a third straight third-round loss, and a second straight third-round loss to the Edmonton Oilers — got desperate. Benching Mavrik Bourque for one of the most careless high-sticking penalties you'll ever see, one that led directly to Corey Perry's game-opening power-play goal, wouldn't have done much. Benching Esa Lindell or Cody Ceci, two of his best defensemen, for letting Mattias Janmark get behind him for a breakaway goal less than five minutes later, might not have resonated, either.
So, DeBoer called timeout and started barking at his team. And then he sent DeSmith over the boards for the first time in more than a month, calling a bewildered Oettinger back to the bench just as he was skating toward his net. Oettinger, the Stars' soothing safety net. Oettinger, their best player in this postseason — the ice-cold-for-a-second-time-in-these-playoffs Mikko Rantanen very much included. Oettinger, who had given up goals on a point-blank power-play one-timer and a breakaway, neither of which could be pinned on him.
'It's unacceptable for us to hang him out like that,' Robertson said of Oettinger. 'The whole playoffs he's been our guy, the whole season. Just unacceptable from us.'
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DeBoer hardly absolved Oettinger after the game, which the Stars lost 6-3. In fact, he came awfully close to throwing him under the Oilers' team 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 said. '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 give 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.'
That comment was almost as stunning as the decision. It's one thing to send a message to your team, to try to wake them up, to try to defibrillate them with as powerful a shock as you can muster. It's quite another to remove their security blanket seven minutes into the biggest game of the year. DeBoer felt like he had to try something. He just tried the wrong thing.
None of this is meant to be a dig on DeSmith, a perfectly adequate backup goaltender in whom the Stars have plenty of confidence. And none of this is to say that, if Oettinger were still in net, Connor McDavid wouldn't have scored the goal that ultimately sunk the Stars' season, a breathtaking breakaway late in the second period off a Mattias Ekholm blocked shot to give Edmonton a 4-2 lead. Roope Hintz, miraculously, kept up with McDavid at full speed, and was all over him, defending the most talented player in the history of the game as well as anyone possibly could have. McDavid scored anyway. That's what McDavid does. That's who McDavid is.
Maybe that soft Skinner shot finds its way through Oettinger, too. Maybe Evander Kane's soul-crushing bank shot off Esa Lindell's foot less than three minutes after Robertson's second goal of the game in the opening minute of the third period eludes Oettinger, as well. It's not as if Oettinger hasn't been victimized by some fluky bounces and own-goals in this postseason, after all.
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But he probably stops one of those, right? Or both? Maybe even all three? He's one of the best goaltenders in the world. A clutch one, at that, one who has historically gotten better as the games have gotten bigger. But we'll never know, because DeBoer cut off his nose to spite his face. He tried to light a fire under his team and instead set the whole season on fire.
As they might say deep in the heart of Texas, you dance with the one who brung you, and nobody had done more to bring the Stars this far than Oettinger. To remove him from the game after seven minutes was simply coaching malpractice.
But let's not pin another third-round failure on one decision by DeBoer. Because there's plenty of blame to go around.
The Stars' vaunted depth failed them. Rantanen's spectacular six-game heater was the only time this team looked truly dangerous. Robertson, who missed the first round with a leg injury and who was invisible in the second round as he worked his way back up to game speed, gave the Stars too little, too late, with four goals in his last three games after scoring zero in his first eight. Heck, Corey Perry's power-play goal to open the scoring was his seventh of the postseason — that's as many as Robertson, Matt Duchene, Jamie Benn, Evgenii Dadonov and Mason Marchment had combined over 18 games. And Perry is 40 years old.
'I'm just upset I wasn't able to do it earlier,' Robertson said of his late-series surge.
The Stars' toughness failed them. Where was Benn, their leader and roughneck captain, when Evan Bouchard gave Hintz a dirty slash on the top of his foot — in the exact same place Darnell Nurse injured him and cost him a game and a half — in Game 4? If ever there was 'intent to injure,' it was that very intentional Bouchard chop far behind the play. The Stars did nothing in response. Absolutely nothing. You don't have to go around retaliating with cheap shots, but you do have to push back, throw a hit, say, 'Hey, we saw that and we didn't like it.' All we got from Dallas was mealy mouthed platitudes. DeBoer merely said it was the officials' job to do something. Lindell and other Stars players said that scoring goals was the best response. And then they didn't score any. Benn started throwing his weight around a bit in Game 5, but it was far too late to be meaningful.
And, yes, the Stars' coaching failed them. DeBoer is an excellent coach, there's no denying it. He's been in the Western Conference final six times in the last eight seasons with three different teams. It's a remarkable run that speaks to his deft hand and interpersonal skills. The 9-0 record in Game 7s doesn't hurt, either. But he couldn't coax any offense out of his team all postseason, other than Rantanen's run. He couldn't do anything to stave off the Oilers' brilliant power play. And in the biggest game of the season, he panicked and made the absolute wrong decision, removing his best player from the game with 52 minutes and 51 seconds left to play.
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The Stars' calling card under DeBoer has been their poise, their unflappability. We heard it a dozen times over the last six weeks, from Rantanen when he was struggling and Rantanen when he was soaring, from Oettinger early in series and Oettinger late in series, from DeBoer after another Game 1 loss and DeBoer after another Game 7 win.
But on Thursday night, in the biggest game of the season, that poise abandoned them. As did reason, logic, common sense.
To lose a series to the Edmonton Oilers is nothing to be ashamed about. To lose with a willing and able Jake Oettinger on your bench is.