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Islanders fire Lane Lambert, name Patrick Roy as head coach

January 20, 2024, 11:31 PM ET [1265 Comments]
Ben Shelley
New York Islanders Blogger • RSSArchiveCONTACT
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The New York Islanders announced today that the team has fired head coach Lane Lambert, with Patrick Roy stepping in to take over.


Lambert was originally named head coach of the Islanders in the summer of 2022, when the team parted ways with Barry Trotz. During the year-and-a-half tenure as the team’s head coach, Lambert and the Islanders posted a 61-46-20 record across 127 games.

However, despite the Islanders finding some success in December to rise up the standings a bit, 2024 has been a different story for the team. New York is riding a four-game losing streak, having won just two of their last 10 games, and now sit 12th in the Eastern Conference in points percentage.

Roy, on the other hand, most recently held an NHL head coaching role with the Colorado Avalanche for three seasons from 2013 until 2016. The Hall of Famer won the Jack Adams award in his first season as an NHL head coach, but after leaving the Avalanche in 2016, Roy returned to coach and manage the QMJHL’s Quebec Remparts for five seasons, winning a Memorial Cup last year.

Given the Islanders’ slide, it’s not shocking to see a change being made. The organization’s moves over recent years have made it clear the team intends to compete right now, but through January, the team has quickly started to slip out of the playoff picture. Under much of Lambert’s tenure, the Islanders have often seemed to lack consistency from game to game or even period to period, and never really found the structure they had during most of Trotz’s time as head coach.

A change was beginning to appear inevitable, and Roy could be the solution.


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