The 2025-26 New York Islanders season did not go the way many hoped, as they faded down the stretch and ultimately missed the playoffs.
Still, reasons for positivity emerged.
Matthew Schaefer engraved himself as a total franchise cornerstone, a generational defenseman for the Islanders. Cal Ritchie had an excellent second half of the season, while the youth push continued in earnest.
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Ilya Sorokin, for his part, was a Vezina Finalist and had an outstanding season, though his performance (along with the entire team’s), tapered down the stretch.
Sorokin, interviewed by Russian Outlet Sport Express, talked about missing the playoffs.
“There’s not much good news, of course,” Sorokin said. “Now, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s probably hard to say it was a blow. But we need to change something in our training system and learn from it. I’m sure both the coaching staff and the players understand this. Our fans have much higher expectations of the squad.”
Sorokin’s likely talking of ex-Head Coach’s Patrick Roy’s system, one that focused on maximizing offense but often led to dangerous rush chances against constantly.
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The Islanders’ superstar netminder shouldered some of the blame, too.
“Ultimately, it was those one or two saves that could have given us extra points and put us in the playoffs,” Sorokin said. “We can say whatever we want now, but the main thing is to figure out why it didn’t happen.
“That’s what summer is for—work. I think at some point I was a bit lacking in physicality. Towards the end of the season, I started playing practically every game in a row, and perhaps I was no longer feeling fresh.”
Sorokin played the vast majority of games down the stretch, with David Rittich struggling and Semyon Varlamov unable to play, the Islanders leaned hard into Sorokin.
As Sorokin said, it’s a long summer. The Islanders can and have work to improve, along with Sorokin.
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