Pete DeBoer gave Islanders the formula to survive injuries now its time to execute
Mathieu Darche went against orthodoxy in April when he fired Patrick Roy and brought in Pete DeBoer with four games left in the season.It didn’t save the 2025-26 Islanders, who were already too far gone, but it already looks like a move that can have a hugely positive impact on the 2026-27 club.Indeed, the single biggest reason to believe the Islanders can survive the rash of injuries that’s hit them before they’ve even played 10 games is DeBoer.We don’t know the prognosis yet on Calum Ritchie or Matias Maccelli after both left the ice in the first period Saturday night in Toronto and didn’t return.
At least in that sense, there’s room for optimism.Maybe they’ll both emerge for practice Monday no worse for wear and the whole episode can be forgotten.As a practical matter, though, it behooves the Islanders to hope for the best and expect the worst.
Which means thinking hard about how they can survive with Ritchie and Maccelli joining Mat Barzal — half of their top six in a perfect world — on the injured list for a period of time, in addition to Alexander Romanov being out for the season.While the Islanders are not about to win a playoff series with their roster as is, they don’t need to.The requirement here is to keep chugging along, win the games they should, hang around the playoff race and be in position to pounce once they get healthy.The good news? DeBoer has already given the Islanders the formula.
They are second in the league in both expected and actual goals allowed at 5-on-5 per 60 minutes with a defense that seemed to have serious holes coming into the season.At least so far, DeBoer has done what good coaches do.He’s maximized his players, or at least come pretty close.
The Islanders have kept teams out of the middle of the ice and made life easy for Ilya Sorokin, tasks that felt next to impossible for them a year ago, when the goaltender was putting out fires on a shift-by-shift basis.They have been physical and hard to play aga...