Semyon Varlamov was the first goaltender off the ice when the Islanders finished practice Wednesday, another sign that he would keep the starter’s net for Game 3 of the first round after Patrick Roy tacitly laid out the case for his third straight start one day prior.
But Roy, perhaps the greatest netminder of all-time in his playing days, decided to throw a curveball instead.
“We’re gonna go with Ilya [on Thursday],” he said.
Before the season, the idea that Ilya Sorokin would have sat on the bench for any playoff games would have been anathema.
Now, as he regains the net with his team down 2-0 to Carolina and facing a season-on-the-line Game 3, the Islanders are hoping Sorokin can be The Undertaker rising from his coffin.
The 2023 Vezina Trophy finalist faced his toughest NHL season since coming over from Russia in 2020 this year, with a career-worst 3.01 goals against average and .908 save percentage.
Sorokin, who carried the Islanders into last year’s playoffs nearly by himself, never quite fell apart, but he was no longer the same singular force of nature stealing games like it was nothing.
And when crunch time came in the playoff race, Varlamov supplanted him as the No. 1. Sorokin started just four games after March 24 — a reset the Islanders hope can pay off now.
“I feel like he’s been controlling his rebounds better,” Roy said. “I feel like he [was] giving maybe too many rebounds at the beginning. I think right now, the puck starts to stay closer like Varly does so well and I think he’s been keeping pucks closer to him.
“He was very good against Chicago, Columbus [earlier this month] and even against Pittsburgh [in the regular-season finale], both teams had probably a total of 40 chances, 20 on each side. So they were tested. But he should see a lot of shots and if he sees a lot of shots, I think he’s responding really well to that.”
The Hurricanes, notorious for how often they shoot the puck, have outshot the Islanders 65-46 in the series so far and have 99 more shot attempts over the first two games.
Varlamov, who stopped 34 shots in Game 2, was under fire for much of the night, ultimately letting in four goals on 5.25 expected goals against.
“They’re very good with the traffic in front of the goalie, so our job is to try and find the puck as well as you can,” Varlamov said. “Also, of course, you don’t want to give up extra rebounds and give them that extra opportunity to score goals. That’s what they do. That’s their game. They put a lot of pressure in your net. They’re throwing the pucks from everywhere. That’s their game. That’s what they’re really good at.”
That is the Hurricane into which Sorokin walks.
The Islanders are hoping to avoid a repeat of Game 2, in which they pretty much never left the defensive zone all night.
But even after spending much of Wednesday focusing on cleaner breakouts, the plan did not seem to be tilting the ice in the other direction so much as evening the board.
“That’s always the objective,” Roy said, asked if he wanted more controlled entries as opposed to the dump-and-chase game the Islanders have been confined to playing so far in the series. “But sometimes you gotta play the games that have to be played. And if they gap up and they hold the blue line, you have no choice. That’s a team that loves to squeeze at the blue line so you have no choice. You need to place those pucks [on dump-ins]. We’re gonna have to be good and go after it.”
In other words: the Islanders are going to have to win ugly.
They are going to need Sorokin at his very best.
