Mathew Barzal puts blame for Patrick Roy's firing on Islanders players
Mathew Barzal spoke slowly. Clearly. Emphatically.
It was around noon Monday afternoon, give or take a few minutes, and a larger than normal throng of reporters were asking him about general manager Mathieu Darche’s decision to fire coach Patrick Roy and replace the Hall of Famer with Peter DeBoer.
As the questions kept coming, one after another, Barzal wanted to make a point:
Even though Roy was fired, it was undeserved. The blame, Barzal reasoned, lay elsewhere.
“It’s on the players. We just didn’t play [well] enough the last three, four games,” Barzal said after the 45-minute practice at Northwell Health Ice Center. “That’s not the coach’s fault. That’s on the players.”
On the first day of the DeBoer Era, the overriding sentiments spilling forth from Islanders players were an amalgamation of melancholy, excitement, frustration and anticipation.
“It’s hard not to feel some sort of responsibility. He worked very hard for us and he had a ton of passion,” Adam Pelech said, in response to a question about Roy being fired. The veteran defenseman then paused for a moment, exhaled, and continued. “We all did our best and unfortunately things didn’t work out. And, yeah, I really wish we could have been better these past few weeks.”
Darche’s decision to replace Roy with DeBoer came as the Islanders (42-31-5, 89 points) are in a stretch where they have lost a season-high four games in a row and have dropped seven of their last 10 contests. Coupled with Philadelphia (39-26-12, 90 points) and Ottawa (40-27-10, 90 points) going on winning streaks in the same window, the Islanders awoke Monday to find themselves as the first team under the Eastern Conference playoff cutline.
The Flyers are 7-3-0 in their last 10 games; the Senators are on a 6-3-1 run.
Philadelphia passed the Islanders for third in the Metropolitan Division with their 2-1 overtime win over the Bruins Sunday afternoon. A few hours later, Ottawa’s 6-3 triumph over the Hurricanes allowed the Senators to claim the East’s second wild-card slot.
Yet, as Bo Horvat stressed, the Islanders are only one point behind both the Flyers and Senators with a little more than a week to go in the regular season, and their final four games are all on home ice. So while being under the playoff cutline isn’t ideal, they are still in a playoff race.
“If you would have [told] us at the beginning of September that we’re fighting for a playoff spot, I think we would all take it,” Horvat said. “We’re in a good spot. We’re still fighting for a spot.”
To that end, in order to qualify for the playoffs, the Islanders spent much of the on-ice session — following a get-to-know-the-new-boss meeting — beginning to learn DeBoer’s defensive concepts.
“He came in and showed us some things. There’s a structure mentality to it,” Anders Lee said. “But I think at the end of the day, the component of our ability to work, really to work smart, and to play the right [way]. We’ve been talking about that for a little bit here. But you have to go execute it.”
But as they begin with DeBoer, Islanders players were adamant that Roy’s message continues to resonate.
“Patrick was liked by every player,” Jean-Gabriel Pageau said. “I think everyone liked him. Personally, I loved him. And I’m sad that he goes. But at the same time it’s a decision and we need to focus on our goal, which is to win.
“I don’t think he lost the room.”
