Ilya Sorokin has never been particularly comfortable in front of a microphone in his second language, but following Wednesday’s match, the Islanders goaltender did cast a happy demeanor.
When you snap a losing streak in front of a home crowd against the Rangers, that is warranted.
“It’s a big game,” Sorokin said. “Every game with the Rangers, it’s a lot of fun, a lot of emotions for fans and for us, too.”
This one, for the Islanders, felt a little bigger than a run of the mill late-October match. It wasn’t just a three-game losing streak they were fighting against, but the perception of this team as slow and deliberate, a part of its identity that killed the Isles last year and a part they are trying to shed under head coach Lane Lambert. As it turned out, Wednesday night’s 3-0 victory was step one, with Sorokin providing the backbone.
“Ever since I came over in the [February 2021] trade, I’ve noticed his work ethic,” Kyle Palmieri said of Sorokin. “He’s a quiet guy obviously, keeps to himself. He works so hard in practice and competes on every puck as if it’s an Islanders-Rangers game in the last minutes of the third.
“When you do that, those kinds of habits just carry over and I think you see as he goes, he treats every game as a big game and every save as an important save.”
The Islanders did not outplay the Rangers on Wednesday, at least in a statistical sense, but they did what they needed to do. They killed every penalty. They played with enough energy and speed to keep up and nullify the Rangers’ transition game. They leaned on their goaltender, but not so much that he was unable to hold everyone else up. They walked out with a win, stopping the bleeding on their losing streak and feeling altogether much better than they did 12 hours prior, although their 3-4-0 record still leaves room for improvement.
Their formula for becoming a playoff team again looks something like that. The road goes through Sorokin, and it includes greater contributions from Palmieri, Anthony Beauvillier and Oliver Wahlstrom than they had gotten leading into Wednesday night.
Against the Rangers, Palmieri broke a season-long scoring drought with not one but two goals, including a bar down frozen rope to seal it at 15:53 of the third. Wahlstrom played on the top line and looked as though he belonged. Beauvillier, following a benching in Florida, looked as though he had received the message Lambert was trying to send. All positive signs, as is Josh Bailey setting off his goal song in UBS Arena for the first time all year with the 2-0 tally.
The underlying fact remains: the Islanders just went 1-3-0 in a stretch where they faced Mackenzie Blackwood, Brian Elliott, Spencer Knight and Jaroslav Halak in consecutive games. Even if the teams in front of those goaltenders were top-tier contenders, that is a missed opportunity nonetheless.
It is one, though, that the Islanders can put behind them if they continue to get this kind of play from Sorokin. The current roster, underperforming or not, is plainly unequipped to win on a nightly basis without getting help in nets. As the Rangers can surely attest, there is nothing wrong with that so long as it gets you where you need to go.
On Wednesday, as Sorokin stopped 41 shots for his first shutout of the season, it did.
“He was outstanding, obviously,” Lambert said.
Coming into Wednesday, though, Sorokin had not been the version of himself we saw last season, with a .908 save percentage through his first four starts. On Wednesday, as he denied 17 high-danger chances on the night including a sprawling, impossible save on Kaapo Kakko in the first period, he again reached that level.
“I think people start to get used to him making unbelievable saves,” Palmieri said. “He’s incredibly athletic and so quick.”
That is what the Islanders will need from him on a nightly basis as the season goes forward.
They won’t always be able to depend on three goals. They must be able to depend on Sorokin.
“It feels good,” Sorokin said. “When you win, it always feels good.”