Andrew Gross: Pete DeBoer hire officially starts the clock on Mathieu Darche's tenure
Islanders general manager and executive vice president Mathieu Darche speaks at UBS Arena on Nov. 22, 2025. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The irony to Patrick Roy’s firing and Pete DeBoer’s hiring as the Islanders’ new coach with four games remaining in the regular season is it very much had a Lou Lamoriello feel to it.
When the former Islanders president/general manager was the Devils’ boss, he showed a willingness to change coaches at any time. He fired Robbie Ftorek with nine games left in the 1999-2000 season and the Devils went on to win their second Stanley Cup under Larry Robinson. Seven years later, Lamoriello let Claude Julien go with three games left in the regular season even though the Devils were first in the Atlantic Division and went behind the bench himself. The Devils were eliminated in the second round.
Heck, Lamoriello even fired DeBoer as the Devils’ coach in 2014 the day after Christmas.
But Lamoriello had nothing to do with Roy’s ouster. This was the work of Mathieu Darche, and the move gives valuable insight into the first-year GM.
First, it clearly shows Darche still believes the Islanders are a playoff team despite losing a season-high four straight and seven of Roy’s last 10 games. He has said all along that the trades he made this season — acquiring defenseman Carson Soucy from the Rangers on Jan. 26, forward Ondrej Palat from the Devils the next day and second-line center Brayden Schenn from the Blues at the trade deadline on March 6 — were to help his team after it put itself in a position to contend.
The wisdom of acquiring the players he did can be debated, but Darche’s intent cannot. Players respect when their GM tries to bolster the group.
Second, Darche has shown a proactive response to failure. He could have waited until the season ended to fire Roy, but DeBoer was expected to be one of the most highly-sought-after coaching candidates this offseason along with Bruce Cassidy. If Darche identified DeBoer as the right man to lead the Islanders, why not get a jump on the hiring competition?
Roy, of course, was not Darche’s hire; he was Lamoriello’s. There was speculation after Darche was hired on May 23 that he would want to hire his own coach. But he traveled to meet Roy and decided the two could work together. One of his first statements at his introductory news conference was that Roy would return.
Still, if every coach is hired to be fired, Roy likely was on borrowed time from the moment Darche was hired. Yet it made sense for Darche to retain Roy for this season because it didn’t immediately place a target on Darche if things went badly.
In a sense, DeBoer’s hiring starts Darche’s clock in earnest. A GM gets only so many coach hirings before his own job is called into question. Sometimes it’s just one. Lamoriello, who ran the Devils from 1987-2015, was the exception, not the rule.
DeBoer’s hiring also shows that Darche values coaching experience. Clearly, he sees DeBoer — who took the Devils in 2012 and the Sharks in 2016 to the Stanley Cup Final and the Stars to the Western Conference finals the past three seasons — as a coach to take the Islanders further in the postseason than Roy could have.
Some coaches are hired to build the program and then jettisoned for a coach believed to be able to help the team reach the next level.
This is a good spot for DeBoer, too. If he can rally the Isles in the final four games and help them qualify, well, he’ll look like a genius. If he can’t, well, none of this was his doing anyway. The evaluation on him will not start until next season.
The job ultimately is an attractive one because of Matthew Schaefer and all of the superstar promise the 18-year-old has, and because goalie Ilya Sorokin is still in his prime.
Darche again showed he believes the Islanders should be a playoff team this season.
But DeBoer’s hiring also signals that the extended honeymoon period Darche enjoyed after helping to transform the organization post-Lamoriello is over.
Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.
