The Islanders’ trip to Dallas started with a reminder of how thin the margin gets when Ilya Sorokin is even a little off.
New York battled back from three separate one-goal deficits and dragged the game into the third period tied at 3-3, but the Stars blew it open from there and sent the Islanders home with a 6-3 loss Sunday night at American Airlines Arena. Sorokin, usually the steadying force behind everything the Islanders do, was tagged for a season-high six goals.
“It’s always tough, 3-3 and you thought you can win the game,” Sorokin told Newsday. “But one, two, three goals and our chance died. It’s always disappointing.”
The defeat snapped the Islanders’ five-game point streak, and it came against a Dallas team that kept leaning on the pressure until the structure finally cracked. Sorokin finished with 32 saves, while Jake Oettinger stopped 17 shots for the Stars, who stretched their winning streak to five.
Pete DeBoer said the issue was bigger than the goalie.
“That’s probably the most rush chances we’ve given up the entire year in one game,” said Pete DeBoer, who returned to Dallas for the first time as an opposing coach since the Stars fired him in 2025 after three straight appearances in the conference finals. “I didn’t think the game was on [Sorokin] tonight.
The goaltending battle looked fairly even most of the game. I thought we had to do a better job as a group up front and on defense in front of him.”
That third period was the part that got away. Dallas scored three times in the opening 13:02, starting when Wyatt Johnston beat Sorokin from the low slot at 4:10 to make it 4-3. Then Tyler Seguin set up Jason Robertson for a breakaway at 9:45, and Mikko Rantanen finished the burst at 13:02 for the final margin.
“We just got sloppy, odd-man rushes, blowing coverages in the slot,” defenseman Ryan Pulock told Newsday, referring to the Stars’ three-goal third period. “We didn’t win enough battles all night. You can’t give a team with that much skill time and space in the slot, and we did too much of that.”
The Islanders kept answering until they couldn’t anymore. Kyle Palmieri tied the game at 2-2 at 4:01 of the second period after Pulock’s shot missed the net and kicked off the end wall. Justin Hryckowian put Dallas back ahead on the power play at 10:52, but Brayden Schenn found space at the crease to finish Anthony Duclair’s pass from behind the net and make it 3-3 at 17:45.
The problem was the opening frame, where Sorokin gave up two goals he normally swallows.
Tyler Seguin scored first at 11:31, beating Sorokin over his far shoulder after the goalie didn’t play the angle well. Jason Robertson followed at 14:32, slipping one past Sorokin’s glove to the short side during four-on-four play after Schenn’s turnover.
“It’s a tough game,” Sorokin said. “Maybe I should give more of a chance for our team.
But I tried to do what I can do. They were better.”
DeBoer made changes late, including moving Anthony Duclair onto Schenn’s line with Emil Heineman for the third period and pulling rookie Victor Eklund off that unit in favor of Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Ondrej Palat. The bigger adjustment came on the blue line, where Matthew Schaefer was paired with Pulock for the first time this season, meaning the left-handed Schaefer did not play on his off-side. Pelech skated with Tony DeAngelo, while Schaefer’s usual partner, Logan Stanley, lined up with Matt Kessel.
“We weren’t great,” DeBoer said. “Tonight was game 11 and it’s the first night I felt we didn’t have great legs, great juice.”
Before the game slipped away, Schaefer gave the Islanders an early jolt. He tied it 1-1 at 13:43 of the first period with a shot on the rush in four-on-four play, scoring his 25th career goal and moving past Hall of Famer Bobby Orr for sole possession of second place on the NHL list for goals by a teenage defenseman. Hall of Famer Phil Housley had 46 before turning 20.
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