Something that became obvious when Lou Lamoriello was general manager of the Islanders was that, as little as he gave away in public, Lamoriello never misled or outright lied in what he did say.

“We believe in the group,” a phrase Lamoriello repeated so often that it became a meme among Islanders fans, might have been a misguided philosophy.

But when he said it, Lamoriello was telling the absolute truth.

There’s no reason to think anything different of the first big declarative statement of Mathieu Darche’s tenure as general manager of the Islanders: “I expect us to make the [first overall] pick at the end of the month.”