Under Mathieu Darche, The Retooling Islanders Remain Anything But Boring

If Lou Lamoriello had a choice, he probably never would have made the trade that forced him to differentiate between the terms “rebuild” and “retool.” But when Brock Nelson wouldn’t sign an extension with the Islanders last March, Lamoriello dealt him to the Avalanche for Calum Ritchie and a pair of conditional draft picks.

That was the first in a series of butterfly effect moves that led the Islanders to where they are entering the first full month of the season today — probably around the same spot in the standings if Lamoriello kept the team intact last spring but also at the start of something that is closer to a retool than a rebuild under new GM Mathieu Darche.

At 5-5-1, the Islanders are one of 11 NHL teams at NHL .500. Their 11 points leave them in a four-way tie for last place in the Eastern Conference as well as one point out of a wild card spot. They are right in that muddy middle between legitimate contender and also-ran.

Considering that’s right where the Islanders have been the last four-plus seasons — their 364 points rank 20th in the league — they’re doing the right thing by retooling/rebuilding. The process actually May 5, when the GM-less Islanders semi-miraculously won the draft lottery (speaking of butterfly effects, another point or two with Nelson on the roster after the deadline would have further shrunk the 3.5 percent chance they had to win the no. 1 pick) and the right to select 18-year-old defenseman Matthew Schaefer.

Moving on from Lamoriello and winning the lottery offered a pathway towards a more thorough rebuild, especially with Kyle Palmieri about to hit free agency and core veterans Lee and Jean-Gabriel Pageau heading into the final year of their contracts.

But ownership is reluctant to tear it down with UBS Arena still in its infancy. So Darche, hired to replace Lamoriello in late May, tried pulling a Capitals-esque threading of the needle by keeping the veteran core outside of forever tantalizing defenseman Noah Dobson, whom he traded to the Canadiens on draft night in exchange for 23-year-old Emil Heineman and two first-round picks.

Schafer, who leads the Islanders in ice time and is already manning the top power play unit, has been an immediate star on and off the ice while Heineman ranks second on the team with five goals. The duo offer a glimpse at a new era, even as the holdovers keep pushing back their sell-by date in increasingly last-minute fashion.

In just 11 games, the Islanders have put together a three-game losing streak, a four-game winning streak and a three-game losing streak before tonight’s 3-1 win over the Capitals.

This is standard operating procedure for the Islanders, a uniquely befuddling and entertaining bunch with an endearing streak of resiliency born from a pair of runs to the NHL semifinals in 2020 and 2021.

Given the unprecedented circumstances surrounding those runs, maybe their true peak wasn’t that of a team that gave the back-to-back Stanley Cup champion Lightning their hardest playoff tests. The best Islanders team of the Lamoriello era was probably the 2018-19 edition, which finished with the franchise’s most points since 1984 before falling in the conference semifinals.

But there’s no undoing the mettle the Islanders developed in 2020-21, nor underestimating how handy that comes in when they’re on the precipice of disaster. The Islanders overcame midseason swoons to squeak into the playoffs in 2023 and 2024. And while their reward was a pair of lopsided first-round losses to the Hurricanes, simply going for it made a statement in the tanking era.

“You look around the league and you see some of these buildouts and you hope for the best for them, but they have proven to be pretty daunting,” Lee said earlier this month.