Firing Patrick Roy and hiring Pete DeBoer with four games left in the season felt like a defining moment for Mathieu Darche. Really, it was another point of evidence in something that had been clear from the first major decisions of his time as Islanders general manager.
Darche made five huge decisions this season. He traded Noah Dobson on draft night. He took Matthew Schaefer first overall and fast-tracked him to the NHL. He fired goaltending coach Piero Greco six games into the year. He added at the trade deadline. And he fired Roy.
There’s a decidedly mixed bag of results there, ranging from the best possible outcome (Schaefer) to fairly poor (the trade deadline) to the jury still being out (Dobson). The commonality is that in Darche’s first season in charge, his aggression has shown up in every single one of those decisions.
The Islanders’ last four games will impact Darche’s grade for his first year on the job substantially, but the last couple weeks have felt like a turning point insofar as the honeymoon period has worn off.
