The 2025 Playoff Sober Report: Was Pete DeBoer right about Jake Oettinger? (Plus notes on special teams)
Let's ignore the controversy and focus on the reality.
The drama bores me. That’s not a criticism of Pete DeBoer, Jake Oettinger, writers, the Stars organization, or the fans. I just hate when non-hockey issues get in the way of actual hockey analysis. So today we’re skipping all that.
This is the last section of our sober playoff report, which previously looked at offense and defense. Now we’ll be looking at goaltending, the power play, the penalty kill, and the splits we saw between them from the regular season into the playoffs.
These might be the strangest pieces to analyze. Goaltending held up all year…until it didn’t versus Edmonton. The power play was awful until it was great. Until it got even better. Until it failed them once more versus Edmonton. The penalty kill was great. And then it was great again. Until it failed them versus Edmonton. Noticing a theme here?
Sometimes the truth is much more boring, and what people don’t want to hear: maybe Dallas just got unlucky in the end. Or maybe they simply lost to the better team. To torture a cliche, the devil is in the details. Dallas is a great team with specific imperfections. Nowhere is this reflected greater than in goaltending, and special teams.