The Islanders’ 2025-26 season ended with a familiar kind of sting: a late fade, a missed playoff berth, and a whole lot of second-guessing. But Ilya Sorokin isn’t sitting around treating it like the end of the world.
That’s not because he’s brushing it off. It’s because he sees exactly where things went sideways - and what has to change.
Speaking to Russian outlet Sport Express, the Islanders goaltender said the club has to take a hard look at how it prepared and played over the course of the season.
"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 comments point straight at the system Patrick Roy had in place, one built to push offense but one that also left the Islanders exposed to dangerous rush chances the other way.
And Sorokin didn’t leave himself out of the conversation, either. He was a Vezina Finalist and put together a strong season overall, even if both his play and the team’s dipped as the schedule wore on.
"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."
That workload became impossible to ignore. With David Rittich struggling and Semyon Varlamov unavailable, the Islanders leaned heavily on Sorokin down the stretch and kept asking him to carry the load.
Even with the disappointment, there were still some bright spots in the season. Matthew Schaefer established himself as a franchise cornerstone and a generational defenseman for the Islanders, while Cal Ritchie had a strong second half and the team’s youth movement kept building.
Sorokin’s message was simple: the summer is for work, and there’s plenty for both him and the Islanders to fix.
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