Darche Talks with the French Media; Talks About ‘Core,’ Lou’s Help

One big theme from Mathieu Darche’s press conferences and press meetings begins to emerge. Consistently, Darche talks up the successful core of the New York Islanders. Yesterday, on TVA Sports, Darche once again spoke heavily about the Islanders’ core he plans to build around.

Darche’s plan for retooling the Islanders is likely not to keep the team the same. Especially not when the Islanders need to clear chunks of money to significantly improve the roster.

In his appearance on TVA Sports, he set the tone for the players and team he believes in.

Retool, Move Forward. Not a Rebuild:

Let’s look at Darche’s remarks in their entirety. They’re translated in closed captions, so it may not be 100% accurate, but it’s usually very close. His message, regardless, comes through loud and clear:

“We have the first pick this year. We’re going to have an excellent player. We won’t do a reconstruction (rebuild). We’re going to move forward. That doesn’t mean that we won’t change things a little. There are too many good pieces here to say that we will finish last, to go for the first pick next year. When you look at the roster with Barzal, Horvat, Pageau, Romanov, Dobson, Pelech, Pulock, and Sorokin. This is not a team that will finish in last place. We’re a team that can fight for the playoffs, and that’s my goal.”

From that statement alone, Darche believes in this core. He mentioned in UBS Arena that he’s met with Head Coach Patrick Roy and talked about everything. That means Roy believes in this team and those players, too. After all, Roy and Darche talked enough that the first moves Darche made were to fire two assistants on Roy’s bench.

Evaluating that paragraph of words makes for an interesting view of things. It seems quite clear Darche is, in fact, a major believer in the big core. He could, and perhaps is, just blowing some smoke and keeping the cards close to his chest.

If not, the biggest trade chips/salary clearance candidates for the Islanders become Scott Mayfield and Pierre Engvall, with the potential to look at moving on from Casey Cizikas or Semyon Varlamov, as well.

Lou’s Role:

Darche also went out of his way to heap praise on Lou Lamoriello and all he’s done since Darche arrived. Put your pitchforks down, Islanders fans. Ask any new general manager in the NHL, and the first guy to offer them guidance and advice has been Lamoriello.

Lamoriello unquestionably was going to support and do everything he could to help Darche in the transition. It remains very unlikely Lamoriello has any role going forward in the team’s front office, especially not in the hockey operations department. But here’s what Darche said:

“Lou Lamoriello was an incredible support. Since I’ve been here, he’s offered me his advice and said, ‘If you want it, I’m going to share everything with you, my opinion about what’s going on here.’ I spent 3-4 hours with Lou in the last few days, just to get his opinion. I would be stupid not to listen to his opinion. I’m very different from Lou, I’m going to do different things from Lou. But he agreed to share with me the information that he had, and he’s been a CEO for 40 years. I was listening, and I can say that he’s been an incredible support for me since then.”

The amount of respect held by Darche for Lamoriello is quite apparent. It makes sense, too. It’s Darche’s first time running a hockey operations department. Why not let Lamoriello give him all possible information about the organization?

Like Darche said, he’d be stupid to tune that out. Then, most importantly, Darche makes it extremely clear he’s different than Lou and things will be different here.

That’s the one guarantee Darche’s made thus far. Things will change on this roster.