Islanders Sorokin Said A Lot Without Saying Anything At All After Game 3 Struggles

ELMONT, NY — New York Islanders goaltender Ilya Sorokin lived out a nightmare on Thursday night at UBS Arena.

After backing up Semyon Varlamov through the first two games of their series against the Carolina Hurricanes, two losses, Hall of Fame goaltender Patrick Roy decided to make a change for Game 3.

“We’re going with a Ferrari,” Roy said on Sorokin getting the call, comparing Semyon Varlamov to a Cadillac.

Sorokin, who had a subpar regular season with career worsts with a 3.01 GAA and a .908 SV%, was being given a monumental chance to “right a wrong”, if you will, and put the team on his back to get them back into the series.

Unfortunately for Sorokin and the Islanders, the 28-year-old failed to rise to the occasion, allowing three goals on 14 shots—three goals that he could stop and two that just could not enter the back of the net— to put the Islanders in a hole that they failed to fully dig themselves out of.

First, it was a Brent Burns screen shot that may have been tipped on the way in, but a shot where Sorokin just needed to put himself in better positioning:

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Screens are the best way to beat the best goaltenders the NHL has to offer. What goaltenders can do to counteract them is be as aggressive as possible because even if the goaltender can’t pick up the shot, the farther out they are, the more angle they cut off. That’s not to say that Sorokin makes this save if he’s out at the top of the crease, but even deflections have a smaller chance of going in.

Then it was Dmitry Orlov scoring on a defensive breakdown, beating Sorokin short side through a partial screen after the netminder got caught off his angle:

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Kyle Palmieri pressuring Orlov forced the Hurricanes’ defenseman to pump fake to create a lane. That fake fooled Sorokin, who failed to keep moving laterally as Orlov did, putting him completely off his angle. When there are screens in front, the goal is to quickly find the release point — if a lefty, you look over the defenseman’s right shoulder, and if a righty, you look over the defenseman’s left shoulder. But Sorokin’s inability to stay with the shooter eliminated his ability to look past Reilly on the right side and Orlov realized that.

And then the third goal, the dagger that ended Sorokin’s night, came off a Sebastian Aho shot from the slot. Again, Sorokin got screened, but he was off his angle from the get-go:

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On a shot that far out, you want to attack the shooter and be as aggressive as possible. Like before, there was a screen on the play but Sorokin being off his angle eliminated his ability to look past the right side of Cal Clutterbuck and pick up the shot. As you can see here, Sorokin is lined up with Aho’s skates, not his blade and that makes the difference.

Sorokin didn’t say a word after being pulled, but his actions spoke volumes after what was a disappointing performance in a game where the Islanders needed him to be at his best.

He skated off the ice and went right down the tunnel, coming back shortly after, still wearing his helmet.

He was leaning against the tunnel walls, crouched over at times, before someone eventually brought him a chair — appearing stunned by what had just transpired.

You could tell, even if you couldn’t see his eyes, the disappointment he was feeling.

Given the team player that Sorokin has always been, there’s no question he was feeling sick about how the game went and how his performance affected the outcome for a team now teetering on the brink of elimination.

He rejoined the Islanders on the bench for the third period and was not made available for questions after the game.

Roy, who made the bold move to not start Varlamov — who stopped all eight shots in relief — for a third straight game. Here’s what he said when he was asked about Sorokin’s performance.

“We win and lose as a team, so I’m not going to go there,” Roy said. “But what I’m going to say is sometimes we make changes as coaches because we feel we just want to change the momentum of the game.”

Roy may have thought he was protecting Sorokin by saying it was a momentum move to yank his goaltender—which it proved to be as the Islanders scored shortly after to make it a one-goal game.

But the first-year Islanders bench boss really couldn’t leave his starting goalie in.

Sorokin had a job to do and didn’t and there was still time on the clock to get back into the game.

It’s hard not to feel bad for Sorokin because not all of his season’s struggles were his fault.

He was certainly part of the issue, but the failures in front of him throughout the first half of the season, backed by the failures in front of him during the 2022-23 season, seemed to have taken a mighty toll.

Now, with Varlamov likely starting Game 4 on Saturday afternoon, Sorokin will have to sit on this tough performance for quite a bit, similar to what he had to do a season ago after he allowed Hurricanes forward Paul Statsny’s overtime shot to beat him in Game 6, which ended the Islanders’ season.

The difference now is that Sorokin goes from making $4 million a year to $8.25 million annually through 2031-32.

Goaltending at the NHL level is weird, as here are the numbers from the 2022-23 season for the top 10 backstops in the league that year (min 2,100 minutes) regarding save percentage:

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Here’s how the top 10 looked following the 2023-24 season:

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Only three goals from 2022-23 made it back in the top 10 a year later.

With Sorokin about to begin his eight-year extension and Varlamov under contract for another three seasons at $2.75 million annually, the Islanders are set in goal.

But, they’ll need the Vezina-finalist Sorokin from 2022-23 to be back as, after earning the type of deal that he got, there can’t be any confusion about who the No. 1 netminder is when the 2024-25 season begins, or there’s a major problem on the island.

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