Isles Notebook: Darche’s First Potential Hire; Clutterbuck Talks Lou, Injuries

Mathieu Darche continues to settle in as the New York Islanders’ General Manager. As has been shown on social media, he’s doing the rounds, meeting everyone and calling season ticket holders.

Meanwhile, firm and confirmed news within the Islanders’ hockey ops department has moved slowly. Then, this morning, Elliotte Friedman tipped off a big piece of news in his 32 Thoughts Podcast.

Stacy Roest, the Tampa Bay Lightning’s director of player development since 2013-14, left the organization on Tuesday afternoon. In addition to serving as director of player development, he’s served as the AHL’s Syracuse Crunch’s General Manager since 2019-20. Before that, he served as an assistant coach with Syracuse while directing player development.

The Crunch, Tampa’s AHL team, had talent regularly flowing through them at all levels. Roest would have overseen the development of players brought along by Tampa Bay throughout their dynasty.

Immediately, there’s an obvious connection. The Islanders desperately need to overhaul Bridgeport on virtually every level of management. What better way to do it than by bringing in Tampa’s ace player developer? Even with a lack of draft choices, the Crunch regularly made the playoffs, only missing in 2015-16, with optional playoffs in 2021 and no tournament in 2020.

While Friedman specifically said there’s no word if he’ll be following Darche to the Islanders, it seems like a sure bet that he will. With Darche’s role as director of hockey ops, he very likely worked closely with Roest. Knowing Bridgeport is one of the toughest tasks, Darche could lean on his friend from Tampa with a fantastic résumé to lead that rebuild.

Nothing’s done until it’s done, but it sure seems more than a decent possibility that Roest will be Darche’s first big front office hire.

Clutterbuck on Cam & Strick Podcast:

Elsewhere in the Islanders’ world, Cal Clutterbuck joined the Cam & Strick podcast yesterday. On it, he discussed a variety of topics.

The highlights included him talking about how they were so successful in the bubble, spearheaded by Lou Lamoriello’s strong words:

https://x.com/RTaub_/status/1927521206149992599

Clutterbuck also talked about his pride for never getting suspended despite being the NHL’s all-time hit leader. He talked about John Tavares’ exodus from the team and why it wound up being what was best for the Islanders.

Perhaps the scariest of what he discussed was his skate cut injury from 2019. Back in 2021, Clutterbuck revealed he still had no feeling in part of his hand. On the pod, he revealed his median nerve was cut.

He said the feeling is completely gone. He still has no feeling in his hand outside of his pinky finger. That meant for the last five years of his career, he played without any feeling in his hand. Talk about a warrior.

He discusses the gruesome injury at 2:16:16 of the podcast. I highly recommend listening to the full thing, it’s a great listen.

Russia Banned from Olympics:

Finally, the IOC officially banned Russian Athletes from the 2026 Winter Olympics due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The decision renders Islanders players like Ilya Sorokin, Alexander Romanov, Maxim Tsyplakov, and Semyon Varlamov ineligible to compete. The decision also comes as no surprise. France takes the place of Russia in the hockey tournament.