Islanders fire Roy, hire DeBoer with 4 games left
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- Patrick Roy was fired by the Islanders on Sunday after four consecutive regulation losses dropped the team's playoff odds to 31.4% per MoneyPuck, with only four games remaining in the regular season.
- Peter DeBoer was hired as Roy's replacement, arriving after Dallas let him go despite three straight Western Conference Finals; he brings a 662-447-152 career record across 1,261 games, two Stanley Cup Final trips (Devils 2012, Sharks 2016), and a 97-82 postseason mark — but no Cup.
- The Islanders currently sit third in the Metro Division at 42-31-9, yet every team chasing them holds games in hand, and Natural Stat Trick ranks New York among the league's worst defensive clubs by expected goals against — better than only Anaheim and Chicago.
- Roy exits with a 97-78-22 Islanders record spanning parts of three seasons, including a 2024 first-round loss to Carolina and a 35-35-12 playoff miss in 2024-25, his lone full campaign.
- Rookie Matthew Schaefer, the No. 1 pick in the 2025 NHL Draft acquired via the Brock Nelson trade-deadline deal, has been central to keeping New York in the hunt alongside goaltender Ilya Sorokin, whom the source credits as brilliant.
- The move is part of a late-season NHL coaching carousel, coming one week after the Vegas Golden Knights fired Bruce Cassidy and hired John Tortorella, who has since won three straight.
- Per the source, the timing only makes sense as a long-term play: DeBoer would have been the top candidate on the offseason market, and the Islanders moved early to secure him rather than chase a 4-0-0 finish.
Why it matters: The Islanders effectively conceded a 31.4% playoff push (per MoneyPuck) to lock in DeBoer before he hit the open market, gambling that his 662-win pedigree is worth more than a likely short postseason stay. With a young core in Schaefer and Sorokin and a blue line still in progress, a two-time Cup Finalist gives the front office roster-building runway this summer that a lame-duck Roy situation could not have provided.
