The Islanders are heading into the season with a new voice, a new front office direction, and a few big questions that still need answers. That’s the lane Joe Buono and Chris Botta explore in this week’s Quick Fix, as they look at what Mathieu Darche and Peter DeBoer have signaled about where this team is headed and how fast they expect it to get there.
The central issue is simple enough: are the Islanders retooling, trying to contend, or doing some uneasy mix of both? The offseason moves point toward a club that is still trying to stay in the race, even as Darche and DeBoer shape expectations for what comes next. With the season now looming, the conversation turns to what that approach really means over the course of 84 games.
Buono and Botta also make their calls on where the Islanders will finish, along with what has to break right if they’re going to remain in the playoff picture. They dig into which players could end up defining the year, then close with rapid-fire questions about the player who needs the biggest developmental leap, what to keep an eye on tonight in Toronto, and how the fanbase will be feeling by April.
One of the biggest storylines already belongs to Matthew Schaefer. Per Eric Hornick in The Skinny, nearly every club record for a teenager is within reach this season.
Schaefer enters the year with career totals of 23-36-59 and four game-winning goals, while Bryan Trottier posted 32-63-95 with five game-winning goals in his teenage season of 1975-76. Schaefer also has 221 shots on goal, leaving him 64 shy of Tim Connolly’s club record for a teenager.
And there’s another notable wrinkle: Schaefer will still be a teenager for the next 84 Isles games, and on Tuesday he was named an Alternate Captain, becoming the first teenager to wear a letter for the Islanders.
That nod ties into a bit of Islanders history, too. On September 30, 1999, Kenny Jonsson was named the eighth captain in team history after Trevor Linden’s departure.
Jonsson served as captain until Nov. 18, 2000, and the team went 30-55-13 during that stretch. The Swedish defenseman finished with 31 points, including 2 goals and 29 assists, before giving up the role early in the 2000-01 season.
The wider message around the team going into the season has also been shaped by some uneven preseason moments. As Ethan Sears wrote in the New York Post, “It’s easy to exercise cautious optimism after everything goes right in training camp. It’s harder to strike an appropriate tone when the last few days of preseason were rough enough that people in the organization started to feel uneasy.”
Still, the Islanders’ captaincy picture is now clear. Pete DeBoer chose Ryan Pulock, Kyle Palmieri and Brayden Schenn as alternate captains, with Schaefer joining that group as the outlier who stands out from the rest. As Jiggs Wesfall wrote for Eyes on Isles, the Islanders decided Schaefer was too young to be captain after Anders Lee’s departure, but still viewed him as ready for an official leadership role.
In Other News...
Islanders Offense Already Feels The Wait For Mathew Barzal
The Islanders opened the season with a loss, and the early absence of Mathew Barzal is already hanging over the lineup. Barzal is dealing with knee inflammation, and while the team has been encouraged by his progress, the offense has not looked especially comfortable without one of its most dynamic playmakers in place.
Anthony Duclair gave the Islanders a brighter note in the opener with a promising showing, and that at least hints at another layer of scoring support once Barzal is back in the mix. For now, though, the bigger question is how long New York has to keep patching together its attack before its top creative engine can rejoin the group. [Read more 🡒]
Penguins Get An Important Kuzmenko Step At A Crucial Time
Victor Eklund is getting a longer look in the Islanders top six, a sign of trust for the 19-year-old forward after opening the season in a more limited role. For a young player still carving out his place, moving up the lineup can change the tone of an early-season stretch quickly, especially when the coaching staff starts pairing him with more established talent and asking him to handle a bigger share of the load.
The timing matters for New York because the forward group is still being sorted out, and every shift in usage can ripple through the rest of the lineup. Eklunds rise is one of the more encouraging developments around the club right now, even as the broader division picture keeps shifting and rivals continue to manage their own roster and injury situations. [Read more 🡒]
Islanders Face A Tough Darche Test Fans Can Already Feel
Mathieu Darche has made it clear he wants to chase meaningful upgrades for the Islanders, but he also has no interest in gutting the very system he is trying to build. That puts the general manager in a familiar spot for a team still trying to balance a push for help now with the need to protect its future, especially when the roster does not feature an excess of young, inexpensive NHL pieces that can headline trade talks.
So any move the Islanders make has to thread a narrow needle: aggressive enough to improve the team, but careful enough not to drain the prospect pool or future flexibility. Darches stance points to a patient approach, one that values organizational health as much as short-term impact, and it leaves the club facing a difficult market where the best targets usually come with the steepest prices. [Read more 🡒]