00:00All right, you guys know the headline.
00:01Patrick Waugh out, Peter DeBoer in with four games left in the Owls season.
00:06Ethan Sears is on the Owls beat for the post.
00:09Time to talk the first post-Waugh era practice.
00:14Ethan, thanks for jumping on with us, my man.
00:17You're at practice.
00:19Kind of give us the ice tea on why the franchise decided to part ways with Waugh
00:24and what that first practice felt like.
00:27Well, Brandon, first of all, thanks for having me.
00:30And, yeah, look, I think over the last week this sort of went from something
00:38that was an outside chance to something that, you know, on Saturday night
00:42leaving the building in Carolina felt like, hey, there's a real chance
00:47that this could happen because Patrick Waugh seems to have lost the room
00:52and lost, you know, the ability to motivate guys
00:57and have players playing for them.
01:00You know, if you watch this team over the last few games, you know,
01:04they seem to just not have the urgency or the desperation
01:09that they really needed at this time of year.
01:11And it was hurting them badly.
01:13I mean, you know, they're out of a playoff spot right now.
01:16They don't control their own destiny.
01:17And this was a team that had been in a spot uninterrupted for three and a half months.
01:24So, you know, Matthew Darsh felt that he had to do something,
01:28that this was the time to do it.
01:30And practice today, you know, first of all, definitely a different tone,
01:37you know, a little more intense, you know, high-spirited,
01:41kind of all those things you probably expect with a new coach.
01:45And, you know, the explanation for Matthew Darsh was probably a little bit less harsh
01:51of a version of what I just said.
01:54You know, he felt that this team needed a new voice.
01:58He made the move with the long-term in mind.
02:01And Peter DeBoer is signed for longer than just these next four games.
02:07But he also felt that doing this now was going to maximize the Islanders' chances
02:11of making the playoffs.
02:13What's the first thing that jumped out to you in the Peter DeBoer era?
02:17Like, just schedule change, practice tone.
02:20Like you said, you know, you expected it to be a little bit more high energy
02:24or high tone.
02:26But, like, what else kind of stood out to you about it?
02:30You know, for small details,
02:33it's the first time since Lane Lambert was the coach
02:37that there has been a physical whistle at an Islanders' practice.
02:43Patrick Waugh never used a whistle.
02:45He could just do it sort of, you know, with his fingers.
02:50So that was something small I noticed right away.
02:53But, look, I mean, I think you're going to see some tweaks
02:56in their defensive zone coverage.
02:58And really the main thing that can change with four games left, right,
03:05is just this group is on notice now.
03:08And they know that, you know, they bear some responsibility
03:13for what just happened with the coach.
03:15I think everybody's well aware that this is a coach that you hire.
03:21You look at Pete DeBoer's track record.
03:24You're not hiring him to, like, be in charge of a retool
03:29or, like, build up a team over a number of years.
03:33You're hiring him because you want to win now
03:36and you want to win soon.
03:37So I think it sort of puts these guys on notice that,
03:41hey, there could be some changes to this roster in the offseason.
03:45And exactly the extent of that is going to get dictated over, in part,
03:52in large part, the next four games and the Islanders hope beyond that.
03:57But, you know, I think it just gets everybody's attention, right?
04:01You know, the Islanders have kind of been coasting through the last month or so.
04:09And now not only are they playing for their season over the next four games,
04:14but they're probably playing for a spot on this team next year,
04:17at least to some extent.
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