Pete DeBoer's back to basics approach a big departure from NY Islanders predecessor

A year ago, former New York Islanders head coach Patrick Roy entered training camp talking about the Islanders playing with more joy and compassion.

Pete DeBoer is talking about box-outs.

Maybe that's exactly what this team needs.

Heading into his first full season on Long Island, DeBoer's priority isn't reinventing hockey or filling his players' heads with complicated concepts. It's fixing the most obvious problem that helped wreck the Islanders' season a year ago.

"We prioritize trying to get our structure in defensively," DeBoer said. "That's where most of the bleeding with this group, in my mind, happened last year."

He's not wrong.

The Islanders spent far too much time scrambling in their own zone, surrendering dangerous opportunities and asking Ilya Sorokin to clean up the mess. DeBoer changed what he could after replacing Roy with four games remaining, but there wasn't much anyone could overhaul 78 games into a season.

Now he gets to start things over, and do things his way.

"Detail with how everyone goes. It's pretty black and white," Brayden Schenn said of DeBoer's approach. "He doesn't have a million ideas. He has the right ideas."

Those ideas begin with protecting the middle.

"We're latching onto box-outs, just taking care of the middle of the ice," Schenn said. "When you collapse in the middle and take away the dangerous parts of the ice, you give yourselves and your goalies the chance to stop pucks."

There are changes coming to the breakouts, neutral-zone play and power play, too. But the larger theme appears to be simplicity.

"It's making everybody's life a lot easier," captain Bo Horvat said. "You're not thinking about 1,000 things or what you have to do out there."

That could matter for a roster that isn't going to overpower teams offensively, especially with Mathew Barzal already sidelined.

The Islanders can't live on winning 4-3 every night. They need to defend. They need structure. And they need everyone understanding exactly where they're supposed to be.

A year after hearing about joy and compassion, Islanders camp sounds decidedly less philosophical.

DeBoer is starting with the basics.

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