Mathieu Darche reveals why he fired Patrick Roy.

The New York Islanders made a major shakeup within their organization on Sunday when it was announced that head coach Patrick Roy had been fired.

Along with the news that Roy had been fired on Easter Sunday, the Islanders also announced that Roy would be immediately replaced by veteran National Hockey League head coach Peter DeBoer, with DeBoer reportedly signed to a very long term deal.

It was a curiously timed move given just how late into the regular season we currently are, especially when you consider the fact that the Islanders only have 4 games remaining on their schedule. On Monday however, we got our first real insight into why the decision was made and why it was made now when Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche made his first public comments since the coaching change.

There was talk that Roy had lost the Islanders locker room after publicly calling out his team last week, but Darche did his best to refute those rumors on Monday.

"Patrick hasn't lost the room," said Darche on Monday. "It wasn't about [that] guys don't want to play for him, by any means. Guys respected Patrick a ton. Again, we just wanted to move it forward from where the things have been trending."

It is true that the Islanders have suffered 4 straight losses and as a result now find themselves outside of a playoff spot, with a record of 3-7-0 over their last 10 games, and it may very well be that Darche felt he had to hit the panic button before the Islanders lost all hope of making the playoffs.

Darche also suggested that once they got permission to speak to DeBoer from the Dallas Stars, the process moved very quickly.

"Once Pete was out there, without going too much into specifics, it really intensified yesterday morning," admitted Darche.

A tough situation for Roy to be sure but Darche's reasoning here does make a good bit of sense.