EAST MEADOW, N.Y. (AP) — Matthew Schaefer and Peter DeBoer have just spent one practice together, and the young face of the New York Islanders already understands a couple of very important things about one of the best defensive minds in hockey who just took over as the team's coach.
“I know he loves winning,” Schaefer said. “I know he knows how to coach a team."
DeBoer took the ice Monday with a daunting immediate task of trying to push the Islanders
into the playoffs following the firing of Patrick Roy roughly 24 hours earlier. They may need to win all four games left to get in after losing their past four and seven of 10 to fall out of a spot, but the move to bring in an accomplished leader with a record of success is as much about the future as salvaging this season.
“This is not only about this year,” general manager Mathieu Darche said. “If it’s truly only about four games left when you don’t fully control your destiny, it’s not a desperate move about this year.”
No, it's more about jumping the line on other NHL teams to get one of the top coaching candidates available before they start making moves in the coming weeks. Los Angeles and Columbus currently have interim coaches, Toronto is looking for a new GM and could also change coaches — and that's just the beginning.
“Guys like Pete DeBoer don’t stay on the market very long,” Darche said. “At this time, I think it’s what we need moving forward. It’s like grabbing the No. 1 free agent on the market. Pete’s an outstanding coach.”
Taking responsibility for Roy's firing, which surprised them, players seemed to get the gist.
“Darchy, he saw us not playing well, he saw Pete being a really good coach and obviously it’s a long-term play with this organization where you get a great coach that has done a lot of good things in this league,” said veteran forward Brayden Schenn, who won the Stanley Cup in 2019 St. Louis after a midseason coaching change that happened much earlier. "It’s not just a four-game stint. I think these four games, we can use it to push ourselves to give us a chance to get in the playoffs and moving forward after that.”
DeBoer has taken a team to the third round in six of the past seven seasons: San Jose in 2019, Vegas in 2020 and ‘21 and Dallas in ’23, ‘24 and ’25. He has two trips to the Stanley Cup Final on his resume: New Jersey in ‘12 and San Jose in ’16.
Set to turn 58 on June 13, DeBoer almost certainly would have had options for next season and beyond. He could have waited to see what materialized, but after a whirlwind of conversations with Darche over the weekend he decided Long Island was the right fit.
“When I first picked up the phone, my initial reaction was probably exactly (that): ‘We’re two weeks away from offseason, what’s the rush?’” DeBoer said. "He sold me on the organization and the vision and the direction and their ownership. ... After speaking with him at length, this quickly became a priority for me.”
Coaching in the New York area from 2011-14 with the Devils and having familiar assistant Bob Boughner already on staff were factors. DeBoer joked that the easier travel compared to the Western Conference was a selling point, too.
And, of course, there is Schaefer, who at 18 is already among the sport's best defensemen, thriving at a position that usually has a steep learning curve.
“He's special,” said DeBoer, who watched Schaefer closely as an assistant on Canada's Olympic staff. “I honestly couldn’t believe my eyes the first half of the year, what I was seeing from an 18-year-old: the maturity in his game, how dynamic he was.”
DeBoer also called Ilya Sorokin one of the best goaltenders in the league. Sorokin's play largely kept the Islanders afloat through rough stretches, but even he could not save Roy's job.
“The last little bit here, we weren’t as sharp or we didn’t get away with as much as we did before because, let’s face it, we got away with some stuff during the year where our goaltender’s been outstanding,” Darche said.
After four losses in four games over a six-day span, Sorokin and his teammates don't play again until Thursday. That gives DeBoer a longer runway than most midseason replacements to tweak and adjust, but Darche cautioned there won't be a full-blown system change because there simply isn't time for that.
Time is running out to make the playoffs, but after spending the vast majority of a season out of the NHL for the first time in nearly two decades, DeBoer wants players to cherish being in the thick of a race down the stretch.
“(This is) a chance to be playing in the playoffs in less than two weeks, and don’t take that for granted,” DeBoer said. "You get in the grind of the wins and the losses and the travel. You sometimes forget about how exciting this time of year is in this kind of position.”
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