Andrew Gross: Islanders must be a quick study under Pete DeBoer if they want to reach playoffs
Islanders new head coach Pete DeBoer at practice at the Northwell Health Ice Center on Monday. Credit: Newsday/Howard Schnapp
Call it Intro to Pete DeBoer 101.
By necessity, it’s a compact course and the Islanders’ players must be a quick study.
“I’m ready to go, excited,” DeBoer said. “I’ve been sitting around for a year waiting for this.”
The first game lesson for the Islanders in getting to know their new coach – and vice versa – is Thursday night as they open a season-concluding four-game homestand against the Maple Leafs at UBS Arena, likely needing to win all four to have a chance to squeeze into the playoffs. DeBoer did have the luxury of three practice days after being hired to replace Patrick Roy on Sunday to begin the instruction.
“While we don’t mathematically control our own destiny we, for the most part, I believe, control our own destiny,” DeBoer said. “If we win all our games, we’re in a really good spot.”
The players must get used to DeBoer’s cadence on the bench, how he calls out the line changes. They must get used to the changes he’s making to both their offensive and defensive systems. DeBoer has emphasized playing faster through the neutral zone and, to do so, for players to come back to the puck. The forechecking scheme has been tweaked as has how the Islanders are transitioning the puck out of their defensive zone.
Defensively, there’s been a simplification so players can better understand their responsibilities.
“Everyone’s different,” Casey Cizikas said. “You learn to understand who the person is and their style of coaching. It doesn’t take a lot of time to figure that out but, at the same time, there’s going to be a communication aspect on that part tonight just to make sure everything runs smoothly from the bench. He’s been around for a long time.”
This marks the 57-year-old DeBoer’s sixth NHL stop. He brings a 622-447-152 mark over 17 NHL seasons into his Islanders’ debut. He led the Devils and Sharks to the Stanley Cup Final in 2012 and 2016, respectively, and the Stars to the Western Conference Final in all three of seasons from 2022-25.
“I can tell you I’m not going to change who I am,” DeBoer said. “They’ll get used to that.”
For all his coaching experience, though, DeBoer has never stepped into this kind of late-season urgency. The Islanders lost their last four games under Roy and seven of their final 10.
It just emphasized how fragile NHL coaching tenure is. Earlier this season, Roy was at least tangentially being mentioned as a potential Jack Adams candidate as the league’s top coach.
But a good coach in the NHL is usually only as good as the goaltending. So when backup David Rittich was playing well earlier this season, Roy was a good coach. With Rittich struggling and Ilya Sorokin making his 12th straight appearance on Thursday when he historically wears down under a heavy workload, Roy suddenly was not such a good coach.
DeBoer also benefits on Thursday by having defenseman Tony DeAngelo return after a six-game absence because of a lower-body injury. Losing DeAngelo was like pulling the loose thread from the sweater. The defense and the transition game unraveled.
One thing several Islanders did address prior to Thursday’s match was a report that Roy spoke too much about the four Stanley Cups he won as a Hall of Fame goalie, two with the Canadiens and two with the Avalanche, and that it wore thin on the players.
“That couldn’t be more untrue,” Mathew Barzal said. “If anything, I, and us as a group, love hearing the stories about the teams that he was on that won the Cup. Especially his team in Montreal. He’d always bring up how they were kind of an underdog all year. That kind of stuff fueled us. That report is completely ridiculous.”
Still, the Islanders had moved on from Roy to DeBoer.
DeBoer entered Thursday having won three of his five first games with a team, including the past three with the Sharks, Golden Knights and Stars.
But this is just the second time he’s been hired during a season. Vegas hired him on Jan. 15, 2020, and he won his first game and led the team to a 15-5-2 finish despite just a 4-3-2 start under him.
“That was a little different,” DeBoer said. “I remember meeting the team on the road. We didn’t have the luxury of the practice time we had now. We jumped right in. [The practices] give us a better chance of coming out here and being a little more up to speed.”
But the Islanders must be a quick study to ace this course.
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.
