In December of 1995, Patrick Roy let in nine goals in half a game at home against the Detroit Red Wings. With the crowd getting on his case, and the team already in a spiral, Roy exited the ice and promptly told Canadiens brass that he would not be suiting up for Montreal again. A few days later, Roy got his wish with a trade to the Colorado Avalanche, who would go on to win the Stanley Cup that very season. Mario Tremblay’s choice to leave Roy in net until he was soundly humiliated remains, over 30 years later, one of the most memorably consequential coaching decisions in NHL history.
Roy has had messier breakups than this weekend’s, is what I’m saying. But Sunday’s firing as head coach by the Islanders is still not how anyone wants to go out. With four games remaining in the regular season, and his team just a few inches out of the last wild card spot in the East, New York announced that they’re taking Roy off the bench after a little over two years and replacing him with Pete DeBoer. Why would the club make such a drastic change with just a week’s worth of high-stakes games left to play? The answer is more straightforward than it might initially appear.
Roy’s only full season with the Isles was a drab one, but once it was over the franchise got lucky in the draft lottery, landing defenseman Matthew Schaefer with the No. 1 pick. Schaefer wasn’t the kind of prospect that folks pegged as a franchise savior, but he’s blown away everyone’s expectations this year with 22 goals and 36 assists, which undersells just how quickly he’s adjusted to a particularly demanding job at the NHL level. His rookie campaign, combined with the return of Mat Barzal after a lost season and some solid play from team vets, rejuvenated the mood around the Islanders. A team that felt mired in mid-table irrelevancy now had a path to brighter days.
When the calendar turned over to 2026, the Islanders were in playoff position. When the league broke for the Olympics, they were still hanging on. But the last few weeks have given fans the flip side of this overachieving bunch: a rough descent that got especially bumpy in the last four games, which the Isles have lost by a combined score of 20-10. (That includes Roy’s final game, a 4-3 loss to the Hurricanes where a gasless Isles group was truly blessed to have not been routed.) The Islanders may be fewer steps away from contender status than a lot of other teams in the league, but the recent run of bad form has made their weaknesses hard to ignore. Tony DeAngelo’s injury in the D-corps means Schaefer is getting absolutely worked to the bone, with diminishing returns. Bo Horvat’s team-best scoring has dried up, and there’s a lack of guys who can cover for him. More than anything, though, there’s a tremendous psychic difference between eighth place and ninth, and once the Isles dropped below that line, first-year GM Mathieu Darche made his move.
The Isles’ poor play is only part of the story. The other part that explains the unconventional timing is DeBoer’s availability. The 57-year-old got kicked out of Dallas last June for not being able to get the Stars over the hump, but he boasts one of the most impressive resumes of any coach who’s never won a championship: eight trips to the conference finals across four different teams. The Cup hopefuls he’s led have all wound up disappointed, but the Islanders right now just want to be like Dallas or Vegas—a team that plays tighter hockey in front of Ilya Sorokin and doesn’t let games get away from them. For Darche, who didn’t hire Roy, the chance to grab DeBoer and lock him up long-term was apparently worth this late-year turbulence.
DeBoer, at the very least, will get a few days to learn the layout of the facilities and figure out his new work logins before his team takes the ice, because the Isles are enjoying a rare four-day layoff before their season-ending homestand. It’s basically a win-win situation for him. If the team gets into the playoffs, they’ll say he was what they needed for that boost at the finish line. If the Islanders don’t do enough to overtake the Senators, they’ll say his work hasn’t really begun yet, and he’ll enjoy a head start while all the other new coaches are still going through interviews. The Islanders are playing the long game. Perhaps they learned from Mario Tremblay’s mistake, and pulled Roy before it was too late.
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