Pete DeBoer's Dallas Stars were blown out by the Seattle Kraken in Game 3 of their best-of-seven series on Sunday night, but hockey seemed secondary after a tragic mass shooting occurred at the Allen Premium Outlets in Allen, TX on Saturday.
Eight people lost their lives in the second-deadliest US mass shooting of the year at the shopping mall.
DeBoer spoke candidly about the situation at his team's morning skate at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle on Sunday morning.
“I just want to acknowledge how heartbroken we are about the mass shooting in Allen, Texas,” DeBoer said, per NHL.com. “It's really close to home, obviously, and just tragic. Frankly, when you hear victims as young as 5 years old, you just, you get tired of hearing it.”
The mall being is just miles away from American Airlines Center, where the Stars play their home games, and DeBoer and he and his family have shopped there on multiple occasions.
“I think when you hear Sandy Hook and Parkland and Nashville, unless it's in your backyard, you compartmentalize it and put it aside, and then when it happens in your backyard, you realize the horror of it,” Pete DeBoer explained. “I don't pretend to know the answer on how to fix it, but it's too great a country [with] too many intelligent people not to do something about it. So, just horrific.”
The team also cancelled a planned watch party outside the arena that was scheduled for Game 3, “out of respect for the victims, families and community of Allen.”
Rookie Wyatt Johnston is one of several Dallas players who have shopped at the mall; the 19-year-old told NHL.com he had went with other Stars prospects during development camp in Frisco.
“Just scary and terrible,” Johnston said. “A lot of these things that happen are just kind of, it's never close to you. But when it's somewhere you've been, it's kind of like, ‘Wow.' You've really got to be kind of aware and careful.”
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