One of the first things Mathieu Darche, the new general manager and executive vice-president of the NHL’s New York Islanders, told his players was that they could put away their razors if they wanted to.
His predecessor in the job, Lou Lamoriello, was notorious in hockey circles for his strict insistence that the players on his teams always needed to be clean-cut. Facial hair was verboten.
“Making that change was low-hanging fruit,” says Darche, BCom’00. “I won’t dictate [players’] appearance. I want them to be themselves.”
As long as they commit to the fast-paced style of hockey he wants from the team, moustaches, goatees and mullets will now be welcome at the UBS Arena where the Islanders play their home games.
Darche comes to his new job after having spent six seasons with the Tampa Bay Lightning as part of the senior management team that led the club to two Stanley Cup championships.
Hired by the Islanders in May, Darche didn’t have much of a settling-in period. He had to swiftly get ready for the NHL’s two most important off-season events – the NHL Entry Draft and the start of free agency.
“I was prepared for that,” says Darche. “I never felt overwhelmed. Working with [Lightning general manager] Julien BriseBois in Tampa was a terrific experience because I got to learn about every aspect of the operation. Julien had me involved in everything. I was part of a very successful franchise, and I learned from a great general manager. When I started here, I was ready to go.”
In fact, it didn’t take Darche long to make one of the splashiest trades of the offseason, sending star defenceman Noah Dobson to the Montreal Canadiens for two first-round draft picks and promising young forward Emil Heineman.
“Working with [Lightning general manager] Julien BriseBois in Tampa was a terrific experience because I got to learn about every aspect of the operation. Julien had me involved in everything.”
Mathieu Darche, the general manager of the New York Islanders
“I tried to sign Noah [to a new contract],” says Darche. “I had a price that made sense to me. He had a different price. We didn’t agree on it. There was no animosity. We found a place where he wanted to sign, and I got the return that I wanted.”
It was the kind of move that management in Tampa Bay was renowned for – calculated, decisive and free of sentiment. The Lightning weren’t timid about trading away high draft picks or moving on from popular stars like Steven Stamkos and Mikhail Sergachev in pursuit of the organization’s overall goals.
One of the reasons why Tampa Bay has been one of the NHL’s best teams in recent years, says Darche, is “we weren’t afraid to be bold.”
Darche made the Dobson trade knowing that the Islanders had the first pick in the NHL Entry Draft, and that they’d be using that pick to select Matthew Schaefer, an immensely talented young defenceman who has already established himself as a NHL star. The Islanders picked up two more highly-prized young players in the draft’s first round, thanks to the Dobson trade.
The Athletic, the New York Times sports publication, was impressed with the new GM’s deft work at the draft. “A great start for Mathieu Darche at the helm.”
The Islanders are coming off a disappointing season where they didn’t make the playoffs. Some key players were hurt. Darche has added some scoring depth to the team by signing free agent forwards Jonathan Drouin and Maxim Shabanov – the latter a newcomer to the NHL after enjoying an impressive year in Russia’s top league.
What are Darche’s hopes for the new NHL season?
“I feel the team can be competitive right now. I want the team to be in the fight to make the playoffs and, hopefully, to win in the playoffs. I won’t burn things down to the ground to rebuild because I don’t think we need to do that.”
Darche emphasizes that a huge part of his job is to constantly take stock of the team and to be prepared to pivot quickly based on the Islanders’ short- and long-term needs. The Dobson situation presented an opportunity to acquire some much-needed young talent for the future. But if the Islanders perform well this season, he’s ready to make a very different sort of transaction.
“We already have two first-round picks for next year’s draft. If I feel we have an opportunity to improve the team [by trading for a player] that fits the age group we want right now, somebody who would make us better, I won’t have a problem moving one of those picks.”
Most GMs in the NHL are former players with plenty of hockey experience, but not necessarily a lot of management experience. Darche has the hockey bona fides – he played professional hockey for 12 years, including 250 games at the NHL level – but he also has a management degree from McGill and six years of senior management experience with Delmar International, a Canadian customs brokerage firm.
“Those years at Delmar were huge for me,” says Darche. “I learned to manage people, I learned to manage budgets, and I learned to manage expectations.”
When he was studying at McGill, Darche was hoping that a job like the one he ended up with at Delmar might be on his horizon. That felt like a real possibility. The notion of playing in the NHL one day was too far-fetched, even though he was a star forward on the McGill hockey team. Only a handful of players from Canadian universities ever make the NHL.
At the press conference where he was announced as the Islanders new GM, Darche recalled how he had once told his then-girlfriend and future wife Stéphanie Roberge, BCom’01, that “I wasn’t a hockey player. I was just a student who played hockey. The next thing we knew, she was following me around for 12 years [as he played pro hockey].”
Darche has warm memories of McGill. “I met my wife at McGill. My brother [Jean-Philippe Darche, BSc’97, who went on to play in the NFL] was there. Some of my best friends are still my McGill teammates. My two boys are at McGill now and my oldest is graduating this year. My youngest is in his second year. So, it’s come full circle and they’re at the same school where their parents met.”
