Pete DeBoer is running his first Islanders training camp with an iron fist

The 13-day sprint Pete DeBoer is conducting leaves the Islanders coach little time to turn his first training camp into a boot camp.The new-ish face, who coached the last four games of 2025-26, cannot assert himself with the sort of sprints and conditioning that were a hallmark of training camps past.Through three days, with the preseason opener Sunday afternoon in Newark, DeBoer’s training camp has been heavy on systems work, with a day of scrimmaging on Friday to get the competitive juices flowing.

That’s largely a matter of necessity given the condensed calendar, but the main effect of the time squeeze is to cut off the fat and force every coach to focus on their priorities.What are DeBoer’s?“We prioritize trying to get our structure in defensively,” DeBoer said earlier this week.

“That’s where most of the bleeding with this group, in my mind, happened last year.”Indeed, there is little need to recite the litany of stats showing the Islanders’ disastrous performance in their own zone a year ago, arguably the biggest factor in their collapse out of the playoff race.DeBoer changed what he could on the fly at the end of last season, but that could only be so much 78 games into the season.

Now is when he can rip out the foundation and lay down something new.Mathew Barzal’s absence from camp underscores a reality the Islanders will be living with all season.While their roster is far from bereft of talent, they simply lack the offensive firepower of most playoff teams.The more games they need to win 4-3, the fewer games they will win.“We’re latching onto box-outs, just taking care of the middle of the ice,” Brayden Schenn told The Post.

“We didn’t do a good enough job of that last year.Numbers showed that.

When you collapse in the middle and take away the dangerous parts of the ice, you give yourselves and your goalies the chance to stop pucks.”Breakouts and the neutral zone are different, too, and the process of trying to remake th...