Welcome to DLLS Dallas Stars weekly! Every Monday, I will recap news, rumors, notes, and articles from the previous week.

Let’s get into it.

Stars vs Wings prospect games

The weekend featured a doubleheader of prospect games between the Dallas Stars and Detroit Red Wings in Frisco. This prospect games, challenge, or tournament, has dwindled down from eight teams in Traverse City, Michigan, to just two. Stars GM Jim Nill has been a part of it since the beginning, and hopes to continue the event, perhaps with another team or two at alternating sites.

On the scoreboard, the teams split the two games. Detroit ran Dallas out of Comerica Center Saturday with a 6-2 whooping after jumping out to a 6-0 lead. This was the expected result, as Detroit has an excellent pool of prospects, while Dallas has either graduated theirs to NHL players or used them in trades in an attempt to win a Stanley Cup right now.

There was not a whole lot to take from that first game other than some hope that the nerves had settled for the young Dallas prospects. And maybe that free-agent invite, Jaxon Fuder, was fun to watch.

Game 2 was a seesaw, with Dallas jumping out to an early 2-0 lead before watching Detroit score four straight. Each time Dallas inched closer, the Wings added another. That is, until the Stars ripped off three goals late in the third to take a 6-5 lead they would hold onto.

The biggest takeaways for me were pretty simple:

• Trey Taylor is good at hockey. The Clarkson (NCAA) defenseman jumped up to Texas at the end of last year and immediately looked comfortable at both ends of the ice. Taylor has elite skating, good vision, uses his mobility to walk the line or easily enter the zone, knows when to jump up and find the open ice, and is solid in the defensive zone. His tying goal on Sunday was an example of all of that, as he jumped up in the rush, found open ice, took a cross-ice pass, and without hesitation, ripped a wrist shot over the blocker. It was pretty. His hockey IQ to drop back slightly into an open passing lane…

• Fuder was invited to the tournament and “mini camp” as a free agent out of Red Deer in the WHL. The 19-year-old finished the weekend with three goals and was easily the most effective — and eventful — Dallas skater. He scored big goals, added a couple of assists, and was in the box for two goals against in Game 2. Did he earn a contract? Let’s see.
• Emil Hemming, the Stars 2024 first-round pick, was underwhelming at the tournament. Hemming did not look like an elite prospect who would eventually make the jump to the NHL. Many feel he is — or at least should be — the Stars best hope in the prospect pool. But so far, he has not shown it in his recent play, and other than a couple of dangles that didn’t lead to anything, he was quiet this weekend, too.
• In what may be the battle to back up Remi Poirier in Cedar Park, I believe Arno Tiefensee outplayed Ben Kraws. Both goalies allowed a bunch of goals in their respective starts — Kraws allowed six Saturday and Tiefensee allowed five Sunday — and it is always tough to evaluate a goalie in this situation. But, Tiefensee looked the stronger of the two and seems to have more upside than Kraws.
• Justin Ertel wore the ‘C’ as the Stars captain, and he played like it. Ertel was a force, and while many had told me he has some bite and nastiness to his game, I had not yet seen it in person. I saw it this weekend, Sunday especially. Ertel threw his body around all game and got into a feisty wrestling match in the first period.

Pete DeBoer speaks up

Former Stars coach Pete DeBoer finally broke his silence following the Game 5 pulling of Jake Oettinger and proceeding postgame and exit interview comments.

If you have not read the article, you should. If you don’t want to read it, here is a short summary of the events and his comments last week.

DeBoer explains the chaos and frustration of the moment and playoffs as a whole. He believed he had pushed all the buttons he could, but the team was still slipping into a third-straight Western Conference Final defeat. Edmonton scored on its first two shots, and Oettinger was abruptly yanked after a Dallas timeout.

After, not during.

And not in the best way, that’s for sure. Oettinger didn’t know he was coming out until DeBoer aggressively gestured and told him to get out. Even Casey DeSmith had no clue he was going in until that moment. It was chaos. And it didn’t work.

However, DeBoer then doubled down during his postgame press conference, using the word “he” (Oettinger) over and over when talking about losing to Edmonton. He then stood by his decision and didn’t even really say much in the way of wishing he had handled it better during his exit interview a couple of days later. DeBoer did not speak much to his goalie, other than an exit interview and, according to Oettinger, a conversation about Game 5 about a week later. Oettinger spoke about this on 32 Thoughts, and he did not exactly sound thrilled about any of it.

Last week, after months of silence and not returning reporters’ calls, DeBoer spoke to NHL.com. He essentially said he wished he had made it clearer that it was a team thing, not on Oettinger, that Dallas lost again to Edmonton. “I should have made that clearer,” he told NHL.com.

But is he truly reflecting on that and the entire experience? Or is the veteran coach and lawyer simply trying to smooth things over to make room for his Olympics role with Canada and a future NHL job down the road?

To be honest, I don’t care. Not because I have anything against either party, but because I am so over hearing and talking about it. And guess what? So are DeBoer and Oettinger.

Oettinger has pushed along every conversation about Game 5 this summer, including on the phone with me. He wants to focus on what he can do better to not put him or his team in that situation when it matters most, and he wants all of this behind him… especially now that he has a new coach in Glen Gulutzan. DeBoer wants the same, even going as far as to say that the NHL.com interview will be his only one about these topics, and that anytime he is asked about it, he will just direct them to that article.

So, can we squash this? Wash our hands with it? Move on?

I am.

Last week on DLLS Stars

Last week, we had some awesome stuff on DLLS.

First of all, we had Stars forward Mavrik Bourque on the show…. and he immediately dropped two “F” bombs, which led Luds to claim that the handcuffs were off him.

Bourque talked about his rookie season, the ups and downs of being in and out of the lineup, and his focus on trying to take another step and grab hold of a lineup spot in 2025-26.

Then! We had former Stars forward and current Minnesota Wild / USA Hockey general manager Bill Guerin on the show! Yes, the Bill Guerin you played as in NHL Hitz 2003.

Or at least I did.

On that same day, I got to head to the Maridoe Golf Club for the Dallas Stars Foundation “Drive Fore the Kids” event, where I spoke to multiple Stars players, the full coaching staff, and got to drive around and get lost on golf carts like an imbecile.

No, I did not hit any balls. And nobody would have wanted to see that anyway.

Finally, we had all four hosts rank the Stars roster players from 1-23. It was fun, and led to many asking if Luds was drunk when he filled it out. I mean, probably, right?

The next time I write this DLLS Dallas Stars weekly article… the first days of training camp and one preseason game will already be in the books. Play puck!