FORT WORTH, Texas — For the second time this century, the Dallas Stars players got a coach fired.

Pete DeBoer just got Hitchcocked.

On Friday morning, the Stars announced they dismissed head coach Pete DeBoer, who in his three-year tenure led the team to the Western Conference finals each season. It is the most productive stretch in the history of the franchise, second only to their run in the late ‘90s, and their Stanley Cup teams in ‘99 and ‘00.

“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,” GM Jim Nill said in a statement. “We’d like to thank Pete for everything that he has helped our organization achieve over the past three seasons and wish him nothing but the best moving forward.”

Here is what he wants to say but can’t, “Sorry, Pete. They hate you.”

Why the Stars fired DeBoer

This move does not sound like an overreaction by owner Tom Gaglardi, who despite his immense passion for the sport has routinely yielded to Nill’s calmer decisions.

This move is a direct violation of Nill’s mission when he set out to find yet a new coach, in the summer of 2022. Nill said then that they deliberated longer on that hire because they didn’t want to go through this process again.

They will do it again because, much like with Ken Hitchcock in January of 2002, the players were finished with the coach.

According to multiple people familiar with this particular situation, the strain between the players and DeBoer was surfacing more frequently in February. He was on the team, occasionally calling out certain players to the media, and asking for more.

This is a common evolution between the coach and player, who increasingly now has a low tolerance for this sort of rhetoric. Because they have the power.

It didn’t matter that DeBoer coached this team through to the conference finals. They didn’t want to hear his “bulls---.”

When the Stars reached the Western Conference finals to face Edmonton last month, they were out-classed in every area of the game. The Oilers defeated the Stars in the West Finals for the second straight year, and the series was not close. The Oilers won in five games, and it could have been a sweep.

In Game 5, DeBoer pulled goalie Jake Oettinger when he allowed two goals just minutes after the puck dropped. Didn’t matter that the defense in front of him was awful.

DeBoer was desperate, and he had to hit any button. After the game, DeBoer explained the decision in such a way that it sounded like he was throwing his goalie under a bus. And then driving that same bus over his goalie again and again.

Two days later, in their end-of-the-season conversations with the media, DeBoer and Oettinger admitted they had not spoken, but didn’t blame the other, since the goalie took to the bench. At all. That was not the end of the coach, but rather another sign that DeBoer’s relationship with the players was trash.

If the players are done with the coach, the GM doesn’t have much choice.

Eerie similarities between DeBoer, Hitchcock

The Stars firing a successful coach is not a new development.

Hitch’ was the most successful coach in the history of the franchise. Starting in his first full season, in 1996-’97, he led the team to the playoffs each year, with conference finals appearances in ‘98-’99-’00. They won the Cup in ‘99, reached the Cup Final again in ‘00, and finished in the second round ‘01.

By that point, however, the players were growing sick and tired of a wildly popular coach who had the full support of GM Bob Gainey, and team owner Tom Hicks. Like a lot of hockey coaches, Hitch’ could really get on people.

With the team struggling in early January of 2002, Gainey made a call he hated. He fired Hitch'. And then Gainey fast tracked his move to an advisor role and stepped down as GM that day.

Gainey resented the players who forced his hand to make a decision he didn’t want.

What do the Stars do now?

Firing DeBoer is the surprise that isn’t a shock. It’s pro sports. These are player’s leagues. No league treats the position of head coach like a diaper more than the NHL.

Since Nill was hired in April of 2013, he has fired the following head coaches: Glen Gulutzan, Lindy Ruff, Hitchcock, Jim Montgomery, Bowness and now DeBoer. Gulutzan is the coach Nill inherited after he was hired, and he dismissed

Montgomery is the man Nill did not want to fire, but did so despite the team’s good record in December of 2019 because the coach had repeatedly violated team policy about an undisclosed issue. Montgomery had been with the Stars as its head coach for only a season and a half.

Bowness replaced Montgomery, and led the team to the Stanley Cup Final in the Edmonton Bubble in 2020. Bowness was originally thought to be just an interim, but the players responded and he lasted two full years before he resigned in 2022.

At that point, Nill was justifiably tired of not only having to go through the process of finding a new head coach, but the entire process that includes assistants, etc.

He will find quality candidates to coach a team that is still in a contending window.

He has to go through it all again because, again, the Dallas Stars players collectively got the Dallas Stars head coach fired.

©2025 Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Visit star-telegram.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.