How the Islanders' Pete DeBoer is rewarding players this season

OTTAWA, Ontario — One early-season success for Pete DeBoer has been establishing the Islanders as a meritocracy.

Good play has been rewarded with more ice time.

It sounds simple, but not all coaches have the communication skills necessary to keep all players on the same page when some are hopping over the boards more frequently and others less frequently.

For instance, against the Senators on Thursday night at Canadian Tire Centre, Matias Maccelli started on Bo Horvat’s top line with Kyle Palmieri after earning his way there from the fourth line with a goal and an assist in Tuesday night’s 3-2 win over the Canucks at UBS Arena.

Logan Stanley, signed as a free agent on Sept. 27, remained paired with No. 1 defenseman Matthew Schaefer, though DeBoer’s defense pairings are part meritocracy, part trying to figure out how to handle Alexander Romanov (right knee) being out for the season.

Semyon Varlamov received his second start of the season as he comes back from two partial knee replacement surgeries that had kept him sidelined since Nov. 29, 2024.

“It’s awesome,” Maccelli, signed as a free agent on July 1 after the Maple Leafs failed to tender him a qualifying offer, said when Newsday asked about being rewarded quickly. “You want to go in and boost your confidence. Pucks all of a sudden start following you out there. It feels really good.”

“It’s really good to have that kind of internal competition,” Palmieri told Newsday. “On any given night, it gives you the opportunity, it doesn’t matter where you start the game. Some of the in-game adjustments have worked pretty well.”

Again, this is not rocket science-type stuff. Any coach wants the best players to have the best chance to help the team win.

But there is a fine balance. Often, coaches are too quick to change during a game, and that can drop the confidence levels the wrong way.

“It’s more about the balance of it,” Palmieri said. “Sometimes you have coaches who hit the line-blender after the first three or four shifts, and sometimes that’s maybe a little frustrating as a player. As you play for a coach, you start to get to know him and his tendencies. As we all continue to get comfortable with each other, it’ll just continue to be more of an impact on the game.”

DeBoer entered this season as a sort of new but not new coach. He was hired to replace Patrick Roy with four games remaining last season, which did give him a head start in learning his new group. But that’s not a completed process yet.

The area in which DeBoer has made a real impact is his ability to communicate so well with the players. He’s had multiple one-on-one chats with players — Palmieri, Simon Holmstrom and Anthony Duclair included — to strike a positive note and to lay out the expectations.

“It is communication,” DeBoer said. “I think we were really clear right at the beginning of [training] camp.

“I’m still getting to know this group and I haven’t been with these guys for two or three years. A coach that has that experience with a group, that’s had success with certain line combinations over a long period of time, maybe gives a little more runway. That’s not the case here.

“Everybody is trying to show me where they fit and what they’re capable of doing. I want to reward the guys early that are doing it. The guys going the other direction on those haven’t necessarily played poorly, and I think that sometimes gets lost in translation.”

Stanley didn’t claim to be familiar with the term “meritocracy,” but he does appreciate the clarity of DeBoer’s expectations. Specifically, he watched DeBoer stick with Palmieri, who missed the bulk of last season with an ACL injury, on Horvat’s line even as he went without a point through the first five games. Palmieri scored twice against the Canucks, including the winner.

“It’s not junior hockey anymore,” Stanley told Newsday. “It’s grown men. Pete wants to win. Whoever is going on any given night is going to be out there a little bit more. But there’s definitely a balance. A guy like Palms comes off a big injury last year and it takes guys a little bit to find it when you miss that much time.”

As for Varlamov, the goalie rotation with Ilya Sorokin is less meritocracy and more about keeping the Islanders’ No. 1 netminder fresh throughout the season.

“I want to make sure that Varly gets in the net at least once a week or once every 10 days,” DeBoer said. “We’ve got a loose framework where we don’t want to overwork Ilya and we want to respect the fact that we have a great backup.”

Communicated well. DeBoer has a real talent for that.

By Andrew Gross

andrew.gross@newsday.comAGrossNewsday

Andrew Gross joined Newsday in 2018 to cover the Islanders. He began reporting on the NHL in 2003 and has previously covered the Rangers and Devils. Other assignments have included the Jets, St. John’s and MLB.