Elliotte Friedman clears the air around $66,000,000 Stars goalie's future in Dallas 

The Dallas Stars are less than a week removed from another heartbreaking exit in the Western Conference finals.

For the second consecutive year, Dallas mowed its way through the first two rounds of the playoffs before taking on the Edmonton Oilers in Round 3. Last year's result didn't go their way, and the rematch in 2025 went even worse.

Aside from a Game 1 third-period comeback win, the Stars were dismantled by the high-flying Oilers, and it all reared its ugly head in Game 5. Two goals on the first two shots resulted in head coach Pete DeBoer calling a timeout and pulling his star goaltender, Jake Oettinger. It was an extremely controversial move and has had the hockey world speculating about their futures with the franchise.

Sportsnet NHL insider Elliotte Friedman spoke about Oettinger's situation during Monday's edition of "32 Thoughts: The Podcast." Friedman shared the link to the podcast on X (formerly Twitter).

"Oettinger could have gone up there and turned what was already a five-alarm blaze into a seven-alarm blaze, and instead, he took the oxygen out of it. Oettinger showed a lot of class, a lot of calmness; he turned down the temperature. The other thing that turned down the temperature— Tom Gaglardi, the owner of the Stars, did an interview with Tim Cowlishaw, who's the longtime, excellent columnist of the Dallas Morning News. And I think between those two things, everything kind of dialed back," Friedman said (20:43).

"Like, I don't think the Dallas Stars are trading Jake Oettinger. Even if Oettinger walked in there and said, "I want to be traded," I think the Dallas Stars would say, "Look, we just signed you to an eight-year extension. We have no interest in doing that. We'll figure out a way to sort this out. Now, I do think the Stars realize they have hard feelings over this internally, and they're going to have to take time to mend it." Friedman added.

As Friedman mentioned, Oettinger will begin the first season of an eight-year, $66,000,000 contract extension with Dallas in 2025-26.

The Stars have some difficult decisions to make this summer

While it's very unlikely that Jake Oettinger is going anywhere, Dallas will still have lots on its plate this offseason.

Jamie Benn, Matt Duchene, Mikael Granlund, Cody Ceci, and Evgenii Dadonov are all pending UFAs, while Mavrik Bourque is an RFA. With just $4.95 million in projected cap space, Dallas has plenty of work to do should they want to retain some of their free agents.

Clearing some money by trading players like Mason Marchment, Matt Dumba, or Ilya Lyubushkin will certainly be on the table. It all sets up for an important summer of decisions for general manager Jim Nill.