The Islanders have their man. 

After a search that dragged on over a month, the Islanders finally found their new general manager Friday, hiring Mathieu Darche as general manager and executive vice president, entrusting him with all aspects of the club’s hockey operations. 

“Mathieu is the perfect choice to lead our hockey operations,” Islanders operating partner John Collins, who led the GM search, said in a press release. “He will be given every resource available to put the Islanders first in class on the ice with our business initiatives and in the community. Mathieu has served as a key member of the Tampa Bay Lightning and has a diverse background in top-level business models. 

“He is a proven winner and is committed, as is our ownership group, to building a group that will be highly competitive next season and beyond.” 

Darche had been Tampa’s director of hockey operations since 2019 and an assistant general manager since 2022.

His job with the Lightning primarily focused on salary cap management, budgeting and player contracts at first but expanded to touch other areas of hockey operations. 

A former NHLer, Darche had stints with the Blue Jackets, Predators, Lightning, Sharks and Canadiens. He also was part of the NHLPA’s negotiating team during the 2012-13 lockout. 

Marc Bergevin and Jarmo Kekalainen were the other two prominent candidates for the job, but the Islanders went instead with the first-time GM.

Former Leafs president Brendan Shanahan’s name also became prominent in the search this week after Toronto let Shanahan go, but it appears he arrived to the process a touch too late. 

“I am truly honored by the opportunity to be the New York Islanders’ general manager and executive vice president,” Darche said in the release. “I’d like to thank Scott Malkin, Jon Ledecky, John Collins and the entire ownership group for entrusting me with the hockey operations of this great franchise.” 

An apocryphal tale involving Darche and Lou Lamoriello gives the Islanders a nice bookend here.

The story goes that at the end of Darche’s career, in 2013, he attended Devils training camp on a tryout deal.

Lamoriello — still running things in New Jersey at the time — asked him to stay on in a manner similar to Matt Martin a year ago, in essence as a practice player, but Darche retired instead. 

“It was the most candid conversation I’ve had with a GM in 13 years,” Darche said at the time, per NJ.com. “In this business, it’s not always like that. This is the first time I’ve had a GM so honest with me.” 

So at least to some extent, there’s a connection between the old Islanders regime and the new. 

That could prove important if, as has been rumored for the past couple of weeks, Lamoriello intends to stay on in some advisory capacity. 

Either way, it appears Darche will have the sort of total authority Lamoriello enjoyed for his seven years and that the Islanders are not planning on a tear-it-down rebuild.

Even so, he will walk into his first job as general manager with no shortage of tasks in front of him and the chance to reshape a franchise that has stagnated badly in recent years. 

He has to decide the future of head coach Patrick Roy, whether to keep some or all of Lamoriello’s hockey operations staff intact — including Lou’s son, Chris, the general manager of the Bridgeport Islanders — and what to do with the No. 1 overall pick, which the Islanders won in the draft lottery. 

There also are negotiations Lamoriello left on hold between the Islanders and the respective camps of Kyle Palmieri and Adam Boqvist for contract extensions, along with a slew of pending restricted and unrestricted free agents, including Noah Dobson, who could command well upward of $8 million annually. 

And that is just the stuff that needs to get done between now and July 1. 

In a greater sense, the first-time general manager will need to reverse the fortunes of a franchise that has been spinning its wheels on and off the ice.

The Islanders need to build out their front office, rebuild a team that’s fallen into the pit of mediocrity and rebuild a marketing apparatus that was nonexistent by decree under Lamoriello’s aegis. 

It is a monumental task for someone who has never run an NHL team — and indeed, Darche’s relative lack of experience was the criticism leveled at him during the process. 

The Islanders’ brass evidently saw enough in Darche’s interviews to abate any worries. 

This is his show now.