The New York Islanders have sparked a late-season shockwave by replacing Patrick Roy with Pete DeBoer, signaling a high-stakes gamble to secure their playoff positioning while taking a top coaching candidate off the market for the Maple Leafs.
It appears the Vegas Golden Knights started a bit of a new trend in the coaching ranks. One week after the team fired Bruce Cassidy and replaced him with John Tortorella, the New York Islanders said “hold my beer” and fired NHL Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy from his position as head coach, replacing him with Pete DeBoer.
The move occurs with the Islanders currently in a playoff spot with a 42-31-5 record, but they are certainly not locked in with four games remaining in a race for one of the final two wild card spots. Before Sunday’s games, the Islanders were actually in third place in the Metropolitan Division, but a 2-1 overtime win by the Philadelphia Flyers saw them overtaken.
DeBoer, who was dismissed by the Dallas Stars last summer following a run to the Western Conference Final, has been a potential Maple Leafs coaching candidate this season. When speculation ran rampant earlier in the season about Toronto possibly looking to replace Craig Berube, DeBoer sent a message through a friend to Berube to "Forget all this noise, I'm not involved here, and it's not happening".
This occurred back in late December. Since then, the Leafs fired GM Brad Treliving, and MLSE CEO Keith Pelley stated that the new GM would make the decision regarding Berube’s future. Like Roy, Berube has two years remaining on his coaching contract with the Maple Leafs.
Toronto reportedly wants to have a new GM in place by the end of May. At that point, could the Leafs be in jeopardy of losing out to other potential coaching candidates? Other teams are sure to be looking for new head coaches by then, especially if things go south for teams with high expectations in the first couple of rounds of the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
With an emphasis on finishing strong, the Islanders felt that letting DeBoer land elsewhere was too risky to pass up. This led to the dismissal of Roy, who, like Berube, has two more years left on his coaching contract. However, unlike the situation in Vegas with Tortorella, DeBoer’s new deal includes more term.
Berube won a Stanley Cup with the Blues after he was installed as head coach in the middle of the 2018-19 season; it seems teams now want to use that late-season "bump" to propel them into the playoffs. The Golden Knights are a perfect 3-0-0 since replacing Cassidy with Tortorella last week.