Sports
High expectations, mixed results: Why North Carolina is entering a pivotal season
THE NORTH CAROLINA TAR HEELS are used to being under a microscope. This is a program with six national championships and the jerseys of icons such as Michael Jordan and James Worthy in its rafters and that has always brought the fair share of the scrutiny that comes with being a blue blood.
But in most seasons, UNC is fielding complaints about its talent, consistency and success. In 2024-25, the vitriol was different. After receiving a First Four slot as an 11-seed in the NCAA tournament, the Tar Heels were widely viewed as undeserving.
With an 8-6 record in its last 14 games of the regular season and a résumé void of signature wins, North Carolina making the field created so much controversy that West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey held a news conference in the wake of Selection Sunday to accuse the selection committee — led by UNC’s athletic director Bubba Cunningham — of a fraudulent process and a “miscarriage of justice” (the West Virginia Mountaineers missed the tournament as a result of North Carolina’s inclusion).
“Last season was hard, and we worked, we fought, and I know we weren’t the best team, but I give my guys just the most kudos in the world for how much adversity and how much we fought through,” said Seth Trimble, the team’s top returning scorer. “And then just hearing the naysayers. I mean, we heard them all year long. We heard them during the tournament. We heard them right before the tournament. It was nothing new.”
Coach Hubert Davis’ four years in charge of his alma mater have featured yo-yo finishes: a run to the national title game as an 8-seed in his first; missing the tournament altogether in his second. Two years ago, he led the Tar Heels to the Sweet 16 as a No. 1 seed, finishing with 29 wins. Last March, it was a lackluster 22-13 season and a first-round tournament loss.
Cunningham says he is confident in Davis’ ability to lead the program after extending his contract through 2030 earlier this year. But in his fifth year at the helm, another subpar season could mean Davis cannot consistently meet the standard in Chapel Hill, risking hot-seat talk turning into a storyline.
“I mean, can we win a national championship every year? No. Do we have aspirations to win it? Yes,” Cunningham told ESPN. “And are we going to continue to support our program, our coaches and our students with the resources to get to that level? Absolutely. That’s our ambition and we’re not going to back off of it.”
North Carolina did lose four of its top seven scorers from last season to the transfer portal and opened this season with its lowest ranking (No. 25) in the preseason AP poll since 2005, but the Tar Heels aren’t exactly underdogs as the 2025-26 season gets underway. Freshman Caleb Wilson is a confident, five-star recruit who anchors the No. 8 recruiting class in the country, one of the best in recent years for the Tar Heels. Plus, the return of Trimble and the additions of 6-foot-6 European star Luka Bogavac and 7-foot Arizona transfer Henri Veesaar should give the Tar Heels a chance to avoid another nerve-racking Selection Sunday. Still, it’s clear that North Carolina is trying to find itself — and perhaps a new identity — in the shifting landscape of college sports.
And if UNC’s prestigious past no longer guarantees a prestigious future, that puts even more pressure on Davis and his team. The Tar Heels’ fan base won’t accept that as an excuse for falling short.
“Even before I was head coach — as an assistant when I was here and when I played here — the expectation here is for every season for this program to have a chance [to win a national title],” Davis told ESPN. “And when I say the standard is the standard, that’s what I mean. And whether you get to the championship game or you make the NCAA tournament and lose in the first round like we did last year, the standard is the standard.
“Those are the expectations every year, regardless of whether we went to the championship the first year or not.”
A YEAR AFTER Matt Doherty won a national title as a reserve guard on a UNC team led by Jordan, Worthy and Sam Perkins — all future NBA stars — he went to a party with his teammates to celebrate that next season’s Elite Eight run.
Although North Carolina had just lost to Georgia in the 1983 regional final, he still expected a celebration for making it to the cusp of the Final Four. Instead, a Tar Heels fan made sure he knew his team had missed the mark.
“I remember going out one night and some guy said to me, ‘You guys suck,'” Doherty recalled. “I wanted to fight him.”
By the time Doherty was hired as the school’s head coach nearly 20 years later, the expectations were magnified. He’d carried the weight of wearing a North Carolina jersey as a player, but his attempt to uphold the school’s ambitions in the years that followed legendary coach Dean Smith’s retirement was more difficult than Doherty had ever imagined.
“You had high highs and low lows,” Doherty, who was fired in 2003, told ESPN. “And so dealing with that — the self-talk, the isolation — [because] you’re surrounded by a staff, your players, 22,000 fans, the athletic director, the chancellor, but you feel all alone. And so who do you talk to?”
Doherty is the one person in the North Carolina stratosphere who understands Davis’ plight. He is the only head coach the Tar Heels have fired over the past 75 years after he amassed a 53-43 record over three seasons (2000-2003), which included an eight-win season and only one NCAA tournament appearance. Although he knew that a program searching for its first national title since 1993 would place a heavy burden on his shoulders, Doherty quickly learned that the program had no appetite for losing. That reality has only been more challenging for Davis & Co. as they navigate the new compensation structures and transfer portal. Doherty said North Carolina, like other blue bloods, relied on its brand for too long in recruiting battles even as the landscape minimized the impact of that factor.
“I think they were slow to adopt the mindset and I don’t blame [Davis] for it,” he said. “I think it really was an institutional mindset: ‘We are North Carolina and we don’t pay players and this is a special place.’ And no one talks about being part of the Carolina family anymore. No one talks about academics. And so it comes down to two things for recruiting: ‘What are you going to pay me and what’s my path to the NBA look like?'”
After producing nine first-round NBA draft picks between 2016 and 2022, the Tar Heels have graduated only one in the three years since. Top high school recruits who might have picked North Carolina over programs without the same legacy and basketball pedigree — see: the No. 1 prospect in the 2025 class, AJ Dybantsa, who chose BYU — have rejected UNC’s overtures in recent years as the new financial rules have leveled the playing field.
As the negotiation battles for elite transfers and recruits unfolded last spring, the same North Carolina program that has historically been anchored by some of the game’s greatest college big men failed to land an elite power forward or center in the portal. Undersized and limited in the paint for the first time in years, the Tar Heels could not overcome their flaws and the struggles of former All-American RJ Davis.
“Obviously, last year we were small,” Davis said. “Playing at our level, you have to have size, you have to have positional size, and pretty much every game that we played, we were smaller than our opponent. And where it hurt us the most was rebounding.”
As the struggles progressed, everyone around the program could feel the gray cloud around Chapel Hill. The Tar Heels hadn’t adapted to the new rules of college sports the way their neighbor down Tobacco Road had, landing only one recruit (Wilson) ranked inside the top five of the SC Next 100 in the four recruiting cycles since NIL was adopted compared to three for Duke.
“He’s had some great winning seasons, he had an opportunity to win it all and he had some seasons that didn’t go so well,” former North Carolina star Raymond Felton said. “But that’s part of it, man. I support [Davis] 100%. I think he’s done a great job so far and he’s dealing with a lot that’s changed in the game of basketball with the NIL stuff and then the transfer portal and kids just being able to leave whenever they want to if they’re not happy.”
When Cunningham hired Davis — a former UNC star and assistant coach — to follow Roy Williams in 2021, he told him to be prepared to adapt. But he did not know what that would entail. Between a multimillion-dollar investment in football and talk of a new arena that could generate more revenue, UNC athletics — and UNC men’s basketball, by extension — has had to navigate all of this as the rules that govern college sports rapidly change.
As a result, Davis and his staff are tackling the greatest challenge facing every team: How do you build a winning program and then do it all over again a year later when anything short of a Final Four draws side-eyes and boos from fans?
“I think what Carolina has been really good at for 50 years is identifying elite high school talent that develops into great collegiate players and then onto the NBA,” Cunningham said. “And I think we’re still really good at that, but … I also think you need some transfers and some of the older players, and I think you need a mix. So I do think the transfer portal and NIL have added to the complexity for the coaches and the general managers to say, ‘OK, what is the right mix for us to be successful and what’s the right mix for us at this institution?'”
OVER THE SUMMER, a young podcaster spotted Wilson — a projected lottery pick in the 2026 NBA draft — on campus.
And, well, Wilson did the rest.
“I don’t like Duke, I don’t like NC State, I don’t like Wake Forest,” Wilson said in the viral clip. “This year we’re putting belt on everybody. I’m talking real belt, sparkle, bedazzle. You already know what time it is. Stay up. Tar Heels winning the damn game.”
UNC’s freshman Caleb Wilson has some words for Duke, NC State and Wake Forest! 😂 pic.twitter.com/0IgVRtB4i3
— Donté J Harvey (@dontejharvey) September 5, 2025
Months before his first game, the 6-foot-8 prospect had thrown the first punch against his school’s biggest rivals. Asked if he regretted his comments, the No. 5 recruit in the SC Next 100 for 2025 doubled down.
“I didn’t care,” he said of the reaction. “Honestly, I’m not a ‘say it and hide my tail’ kind of guy. If I say it out of my mouth, then that’s what I mean. Let me back it up when I get on the court.”
Every great North Carolina team has had a star with the swagger Wilson oozes. Davis says he believes in this season’s team as much as any that he has coached in Chapel Hill, in part because of Wilson, who understands the pressure that comes with trying to return the Tar Heels to the pinnacle of the sport — and seems to love it.
By all accounts, Wilson has spent the offseason showcasing a dominance in workouts and practices that has excited his teammates about what’s ahead.
“We have incredible talent and [Wilson], since he got here, he has surprised me a lot with his playmaking ability and just how smart of a player he is,” said Veesaar, the former Arizona standout. “I didn’t think it was possible coming out of high school. I knew he was a freak athlete and a really good player, but just the way he can actually read the game and pass is what has really stood out to me. I think he’s going to help us elevate our game.”
Of course, North Carolina is bigger than only one player. But Wilson is in Chapel Hill to help UNC start a new chapter and prove that Carolina is still Carolina — and he’s not alone. Veesaar was one of the top targets in the portal. Trimble, the only returning player who averaged double figures a season ago (11.6 PPG), is due for a breakout season. And Wilson is one of three top-60 recruits in Davis’ top-10 class. That ranking doesn’t include Bogavac, who has played professionally in Europe since he was a teenager.
It’s undeniable UNC has more players with potential than the proven commodities of past years. Davis says this season’s group is “coachable.” And this team won’t suffer the same physical disadvantages that hurt the program in past years.
Former NBA agent Jim Tanner was also hired as general manager to help the program identify and attract more elite players moving forward.
The ultimate test of these Tar Heels will be whether they can advance past the first round of the NCAA tournament after failing to do so two of the past three years. And with the program’s future spot in college basketball’s pecking order potentially on the line, blocking out the noise could prove more difficult than it has ever been — especially if the turbulence of last March carries over into this season.
“You’ve got to embrace that people aren’t rooting for you,” Trimble said. “People want to see you fail. People hate you. People hate the jerseys that you put on and you’ve just got to accept it, and you’ve got to go on the court with that extra motivation, with that extra confidence knowing that they want to see you lose.”
Davis, however, is notoriously difficult to rattle. He has disconnected from the internet and all of its vitriol. If there are any doubters out there, he doesn’t pay attention to them, he said.
“I’m not on social media,” Davis said. “[I’m] focusing on what is real and what is real is that it’s my job to, as the head coach, lead this program to the best of my ability. And that’s something that nothing will take my focus off of.
“[The] other thing is there are highs and lows in anything you do in your life. I’ve never seen or experienced anything where it was all sunny days. I’ve just never experienced that, so if that’s not possible, then on those rainy and stormy or cloudy days, those are the days to learn from and grow from. And if you look at it from that perspective, there are a lot more sunny days than cloudy days.”
The ball is tipped
And there you are
You’re running for your life
You’re a shooting star
David Barrett was sitting in a bar when the idea came to him. The 31-year-old musician had spent his entire young adult life grinding as a performer in the watering holes of Michigan. College bars. Dive bars. Even the occasional honky tonk. On this particular spring night in 1986, it was an East Lansing establishment known as the Varsity Inn and his set — a performance heard by perhaps two dozen patrons — was done.
And all the years
No one knows
Just how hard you worked
But now it shows
Barrett was unwinding over a drink. With one eye he watched the TV over the bar, watching Larry Bird’s Boston Celtics running over another unfortunate NBA opponent. His other eye was affixed on the woman who had served him that drink.
“The waitress was so beautiful, I thought, well, I’m a songwriter, so perhaps my only chance to catch her attention was through poetry,” Barrett says today. “If I could express to her the poetry of Larry Bird’s abilities at the height of his career, this special moment in his life creating so many special moments on the court, perhaps she would be impressed.”
Well, was she?
“No, she was rather busy.”
No offense to Barrett, but we should all be thankful that she had more critical tasks than posting up at the bar to admire the singer’s basketball spoken word. Because it was within that space of lonely time that, inspired by his own lesson about moments, he scribbled three words onto a cocktail napkin. The following morning, he expanded those words into a chorus, this time onto a stack of napkins at a brunch spot, The Knight Cap Too.
In one shining moment,
it’s all on the line
One shining moment,
there frozen in time
For nearly 40 years, those lyrics and the tune Barrett wrote to accompany them have been the soundtrack of our college basketball lives. On Monday night, shortly after the men’s college basketball national champion is crowned, the winning team will lock arms on the floor of Lucas Oil Stadium, gaze up at the jumbotron and soak up a three-minute montage of clips from this year’s tournament, set to Barrett’s song, building to the inevitable 30-second climax of images of them winning the very title that they are very much still celebrating.
“There are so many moments that make up a championship celebration,” explains Mike Krzyzewski, who won five national titles as Duke’s head coach. “There’s the moment the game ends. There’s hugging your family. There’s cutting down the nets. The moment of being handed the trophy. But the moment it feels real is when they play ‘One Shining Moment.'”
“It’s this literal life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing, watching that video set to that song,” adds John Calipari, who won it all with Kentucky in 2012. “It’s like watching a movie of your life, that you wrote, with the people who wrote it with you.”
“You also don’t just watch it if you win it,” says Tom Izzo, who celebrated with Michigan State in 2000. “If you are there at the game, you wait to see it. If you are home on the sofa, you wait to see it. The season isn’t done until you hear that song.”
And to think, the NFL almost intercepted it right out from under college basketball’s nose.
For that moment, let’s go back to ’86. That’s when Barrett met sports reporter Armen Keteyian. Keteyian, like Barrett, was a native of the Detroit area and had moved to New York to write for Sports Illustrated. Whenever Barrett went East, he’d stay at Keteyian’s apartment. During one of those visits, the two were watching the NBA Finals on TV — Larry Bird again, doing work against the Houston Rockets — and Barrett mentioned his basketball song from the napkins.
Keteyian told Barrett that if he got the song recorded, he’d love to hear it.
A few weeks later, a cassette was waiting in Keteyian’s mailbox, tracks laid down in a make-do studio used for local advertising jingles. The reporter loved it, so he walked the tape over to a colleague in TV production.
“One day my phone rang and the gentleman on the other end said he was Doug Towey and he was the creative director at CBS Sports,” Barrett recalls now, his throat catching to hold back tears. “Of course, I didn’t believe him at first. He sounded like a buddy of mine pulling a prank. But over the next 15 minutes, I made a friend for life over a phone call that changed my life.”
Towey, a sports television legend — the theme music for The Masters, the iconic CBS Sports college sports themes, you name it and Towey was probably behind it — had fallen in love with the song and told Barrett that he really, really wanted to use it for … Super Bowl XXI?
“Yes, it was a basketball song, but you know what you do not do in that situation?” Barrett says. “You do not say no to CBS. Why yes, Doug Towey, please use my song for the Super Bowl!”
CBS even flew Barrett out to Pasadena to watch the matchup between John Elway’s Denver Broncos and Lawrence Taylor’s New York Giants. During his postgame report, sportscaster Brent Musburger even quoted the song. “The New York Giants, their first Super Bowl triumph, a shining moment they will never forget…” The time had arrived. Barrett’s big break was happening!
But it never ran. The Super Bowl-winning Giants were a little too chatty in their postgame locker room interviews, so the broadcast ran long, and time ran out. Barrett was crushed — until a second call from Towey.
“He said they wanted to use it for March Madness,” Barrett’s voice nearly explodes as he tells the story. “So, my little song about basketball, you know what? It figured out a way to make sure it was still a basketball song.”
On March 30, 1987, “One Shining Moment” made its debut in the most perfectly shiny momentous manner.
Indiana’s Keith Smart had stroked a drifting corner jump shot with four seconds remaining to defeat Syracuse for the championship. CBS Sports editors scrambled to add nine shots from that game to the end of the montage they had already pieced together throughout the month. The seventh of those images was Smart’s dagger.
From a clunky makeshift video edit room next to the CBS production truck in the bowels of the Superdome, the instant those shots were added, the videotape was popped and sprinted by hand via a panicked young producer to the end of that truck, where tape machines had just spent hours turning around instant replays and interview clips for the telecast. It got crammed into one of those machines, cued, and ready to play.
Once again, it was Musburger who did the lead-in honors. And this time it aired.
“The idea of the song, that one moment can change everything. Well, that’s what happened to me in that moment,” says Barrett, who has since composed themes for CBS, ABC and PBS, melodic backdrops for the Olympics, U.S. Open tennis, the PGA Championship, and a documentary about C.S. Lewis. He’s won two Emmys.
His go-to joke now is to say: “After all those years, suddenly I had talent!”
Since that night, CBS Sports and now TNT have aired 38 editions of “One Shining Moment” performed by four different singers. Barrett himself did the honors over the first seven editions before Towey recruited Philadelphia soul legend Teddy Pendergrass for a new version. Bennett’s vocals returned in 2000, along with a bluesier overhaul of the tune. Two years after that, Barrett received another call from Towey, asking how he’d feel if Luther Vandross were to give the song a spin. Barrett said of course and asked when it would happen. Towey, clearly having already made up his mind before the call, told Barrett that Vandross was slated to be in the studio that very night.
Vandross laid down his vocals in the winter of 2002, captured by CBS cameras to be intercut with the hoops highlights in true music video fashion. The following spring Vandross suffered a massive stroke that forever altered his voice, meaning that “One Shining Moment” was the final song recorded by the legendary artist.
It has been Luther’s song ever since, with the exception of 2010, when Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson’s rendition was beloved for its sound but criticized because the internet claimed it was imbalanced, with too much of her and not enough college basketball. (At 3:12, it’s only a few seconds longer than average, and Hudson is featured for a total of about eight seconds.)
Screening all 38 editions of “One Shining Moment” (thanks, Internet!) is a history lesson not just on college basketball, but television production. Grainy standard definition video transitions into 4K HD as majestically as the images of 1980s feathered hairstyles morph into low burst fades. The production process has evolved not unlike the game being played on the floor of the arena. Digitized and fast-paced, with the ability to be nimble on the fly like UConn and Michigan on the break. But the spirit of how it is pieced together hasn’t changed at all.
“We have a dedicated team that travels to the Final Four. They are on site,” explains Drew Watkins, SVP and Creative Director of TNT Sports, from the sprawling TV production compound that sits outside the south gate of Lucas Oil Stadium.
Watkins has been with TNT since 2000; before that he was an entry-level producer at ESPN. On Monday night, he will be keeping an eye on his on-site producer and editor, George Adams and Chris Vining.
“They’re in one of our edit trucks and are linked in with the studio and the game production truck,” Watkins says of how it will all go down as the clock ticks down on the title game. “So, when we’re editing those plays, and we’re filling in those last few moments and winners are being decided and ‘One Shining Moment’ is minutes away from airing, there is a team on site in the TV compound that is putting those shots together, talking to the broadcast trucks to make sure everything is on track.”
There will actually be two edit suites running simultaneously, just in case. Because all it takes is one power outage, one video glitch or one computer deciding that it’s a great time for a restart, to turn the dream of Barrett’s song into one nightmare moment. Redundancy is a producer’s best friend. No one wants to be the person who ended a four-decade streak of making air.
“The good news is that we have backups in place,” Watkins said. “The better news is that nobody’s having to pop a tape and run it across a parking lot anymore.”
Once that final shot is added and the final click of the mouse sends the finished product to the truck, Adams, Vining, Watkins and their colleagues make sure to pause and watch their work go out into the world, collapsed back into the chairs of their respective production trucks, just like the 20-plus million viewers at home.
Meanwhile, the viewing of “One Shining Moment” as it airs on the arena’s big screen always feels downright intimate, even on a tiny basketball floor situated in the center of a 70,000-seat NFL stadium-turned-basketball gym.
That’s the part that chokes up Krzyzewski, Calipari and Izzo when they talk about it. The part that former players always remember as the pinnacle of their first minutes as champions.
On Monday night, the man who brought us the song will be right there with them. Because it’s his favorite part, too: David Barrett’s literal “One Shining Moment.”
“People ask me all the time which ‘One Shining Moment’ is my favorite one to watch, but I can’t answer that. That’s impossible,” he said on Saturday morning as he prepared to attend the semifinal games with his wife, Tracy. (No, she’s not the waitress from East Lansing, though that server, Jan Shoemaker, and Barrett were eventually reunited through a mutual friend.)
Tracy is a Michigan alum, and she and David still live in the Detroit area, where they raised two girls. As soon as they arrived in Indianapolis, they purchased some Block M Final Four gear before they witnessed the Wolverines’ devastation of the Arizona Wildcats to officially become the favorites to win the national title.
“No, I do not have a favorite ‘One Shining Moment,'” Barrett repeated. Then he laughed. “But Monday night, if we get to watch the home team watch themselves celebrate a championship, set to my little basketball song, well…”
That would be a moment.
“Yes, it would.”
INDIANAPOLIS — Duke star freshman Cameron Boozer, a projected top-five pick in the 2026 NBA draft, said he suffered multiple fractures around one of his eyes during his team’s loss to UConn in the Elite Eight.
Boozer did not offer specifics about the injury but said he decided against surgery only two months before the NBA draft.
“I have a couple of fractures, but I’m all good,” Boozer said as he accepted The Associated Press and United States Basketball Writers Association player of the year awards. “I’m just going through the healing process. It hurt in the game, but I wish the outcome would have been better, but that’s not really what I’m here to focus on. We had a great year. Like I said, it’s an individual award, but I wouldn’t be here without my teammates and my coaches.”
During Duke’s 73-72 loss to UConn on March 29 — decided on Braylon Mullins‘ 3-pointer with 0.4 seconds to play — Boozer took an elbow to the face as he drove to the rim on 7-foot-1 center Eric Reibe. Soon after the play, Boozer’s right eye began to swell and a Duke trainer applied a soda can to his face while he sat on the bench.
Depending on its severity, the eye injury could impact Boozer’s standing in the NBA draft. He is one of the most decorated players in college basketball history, but he has faced scrutiny about whether he has the next-level physical tools to compete against bigger, stronger and more athletic players in the NBA.
The 6-9, 250-pound forward said he is ready to “win” in the NBA, no matter where he’s picked.
“I think I’m just a winning player, all-around player. I think I impact the game in so many different ways,” Boozer said. “And I think my competitiveness translates to any level. I think any team who takes a chance on me is going to be very happy with the results they get from it.”
Boozer admitted that he had a lot of emotions accepting awards in Indianapolis, the site of this year’s Final Four, a week after his team had been eliminated by the Huskies, who will face Michigan in the national title game Monday night. But those emotions were secondary to his feelings after his twin brother, Cayden Boozer, faced backlash on social media following his turnover that preceded Mullins’ game-winning shot in the loss.
“First of all, I’d like to say it’s definitely nasty, but that’s not the reason, that one play is not the reason we lost,” Cameron Boozer said. “But just being there for him, obviously it’s tough. It’s going to be hard for anyone to go through that. There is not really that much I can say to make him feel better. We’re all hurting as a team, but we’re going to get through it together. We’re a super-connected group. It’s definitely a hard moment, but he’s a tough guy. We’re all tough. It’s going to make us so much better going forward. So it’s something you’ve got to take on a chin and learn and grow from.”
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The New York Islanders have fired head coach Patrick Roy despite being in a tight playoff race.
Islanders GM Mathieu Darche announced the change from Roy to Peter DeBoer, who was fired by the Dallas Stars in June 2025.
The move comes with just four games left in the regular season for the Islanders, who sit on a four-game losing streak entering Sunday. And the streak comes with seven losses in their last 10 games.
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Head coach Patrick Roy of the New York Islanders manages bench duties during the first period against the Montreal Canadiens at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, on March 21, 2026. (Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images)
As the NHL standings sit entering Sunday, the Islanders, who were once comfortably in position to reach the Stanley Cup Playoffs, sit third in the Metropolitan division with 89 points, which would give them a slot if the season ended today.
However, the Philadelphia Flyers (88 points) and Columbus Blue Jackets (88) are gunning for that third and final divisional spot in the few games remaining. As a result, the Islanders are making the surprise change in hopes DeBoer can get them into the playoffs over the next week.
HOCKEY OFFICIALS REJECT CANADIAN COACH’S COMPLAINTS OF 3-ON-3 OVERTIME RULES AFTER OLYMPIC LOSS
Roy’s exit comes after a loss where the Carolina Hurricanes, who already secured a playoff spot, out shot them 40-16 in a 4-3 loss for New York.
The Islanders are not the only NHL team making a change at head coach with just days left in the regular season. The Vegas Golden Knights axed Bruce Cassidy from his role, hiring veteran coach John Tortorella on an interim basis last week.
Patrick Roy coaches the New York Islanders during a game against the New Jersey Devils at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., on Feb. 5, 2026. (Rich Graessle/NHLI)
Like the Islanders, the Golden Knights (86) have the third and final position in their division, though the race is a bit more comfortable for Vegas with a five-point lead over the Los Angeles Kings.
But, while Tortorella is an interim move for Vegas, the Islanders are keeping DeBoer intact heading into the 2026-27 campaign.
DeBoer has been head coach of five different franchises over his extensive coaching career. He owns a career 662-447-152 record in 1,261 games with the Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils, San Jose Sharks, Golden Knights and the Stars, who he led for the past three seasons before his firing.
Head coach Patrick Roy of the New York Islanders looks on during a game against the Philadelphia Flyers at UBS Arena in Elmont, N.Y., on April 3, 2026. (Steven Ryan/NHLI)
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DeBoer wasn’t with a team this season, but he’s stepping up for the opportunity to help turn the tides on Long Island, as the Islanders hope to make the playoffs after missing out the previous two seasons.
While DeBoer hasn’t coached this season, he was a part of Jon Cooper’s Team Canada staff for the Milan Cortina Olympics earlier this year.
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Inside the origin story of ‘One Shining Moment’ — the highlight of March Madness
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