{"id":410273,"date":"2026-01-16T05:54:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T05:54:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/410273\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T05:54:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T05:54:14","slug":"ilya-sorokins-prowess-powers-islanders-to-strong-road-win-over-oilers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/410273\/","title":{"rendered":"Ilya Sorokin’s prowess powers Islanders to strong road win over Oilers"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDMONTON, Alberta \u2014 Put this one on the Vezina Trophy r\u00e9sum\u00e9 for Ilya Sorokin.<\/p>\n

And, as a matter of fact, put it on some teach tape for defensive zone structure, too.<\/p>\n

The Islanders didn\u2019t have much by way of offense Thursday night in Alberta. But they escaped Edmonton with two points and a 1-0 win over an Oilers squad that had them outgunned all night thanks to the way they bore down in their own zone before finally hitting pay dirt.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gave it our all, we battled,\u201d Matthew Schaefer told The Post after he and Ryan Pulock drew the matchup with Connor McDavid and helped snap No. 97\u2019s 20-game point streak. \u201cWe gotta stop their top two lines \u2019cause those are where a lot of the power comes from for their team. When they\u2019re going, everyone\u2019s going there. So we had to make some big plays there. Sorokie played a great game.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was a night, and maybe the first such night since Bo Horvat was injured for the second time, when you could see just how much the Islanders are missing their leading scorer.<\/p>\n

\"NewIlya Sorokin makes a save on Zach Hyman\u2019s shot during the first period of the Islanders\u2019 1-0 road win over the Oilers at Rogers Place on Jan. 15, 2026. Perry Nelson-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

Horvat, who went off on New Year\u2019s Day with a lower-body injury similar to the one that caused him to miss time in December, was originally supposed to join them for this entire trip and perhaps play by the end of it. Over halfway through, he\u2019s still rehabbing in New York with the Islanders choosing to play it cautiously instead.<\/p>\n

They missed him Thursday, and missed him badly.<\/p>\n

It was a product of the Islanders\u2019 own sturdy defense and Sorokin\u2019s excellence in net that the game stayed scoreless for so long. The Islanders had just four shots on net in the second period and, when Leon Draisaitl was called for tripping Schaefer, they had gone the first 12 minutes of the third without one.<\/p>\n

That is how hockey goes sometimes, though. And the last-ranked power play in the league, on a six-game scoreless streak, put together a beautiful piece of passing \u2014 Mathew Barzal to Cal Ritchie in front of the net, who backhanded it behind him to Anthony Duclair \u2014 to set up Duclair to score at 13:42 of the third and put the Islanders ahead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just thinking what my next play is when [Barzal] has it,\u201d Ritchie told The Post. \u201cYou can try to bait someone in and then give it to me. He did a good job doing that and then spin it, found Dukie on the tape.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI just knew the puck was coming,\u201d Duclair said. \u201cI had to put it far side. It was a great play by Ritch there.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, after 53 minutes straight of defense including two successful penalty kills of their own \u2014 one of which featured an Evan Bouchard shot off the crossbar that set off the goal horn inside Rogers Place before a review determined it hadn\u2019t crossed the line.<\/p>\n

\"Islanders'Ilya Sorokin makes a save on Mattias Janmark during the second period of the Islanders\u2019 road win over the Oilers AP<\/p>\n

After defending all night, a few more minutes was not much to ask and with 30 seconds to go, there was another piece of luck as Draisaitl\u2019s one-timer hit the post.<\/p>\n

\u201cI see nothing,\u201d Sorokin said of that play, having finished with a perfect 35 saves. \u201cI just hear post sound. I think it\u2019s a goal. It goes, the whole rink starts [getting loud]. I see the puck in the corner and say, \u2018Thank God.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Offensively, this was not a night to remember.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tOn the ice from Long Island\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Inside the Islanders by Ethan Sears, a weekly Sports+ exclusive.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\tThank you\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t a single line that held the puck in the offensive zone for a noteworthy period of time. The Islanders had no forecheck, no cycle game, not much of anything aside from defense, guile and goaltending.<\/p>\n

Coach Patrick Roy wasted no time in switching Jonathan Drouin to the third line and Max Shabanov to the second. The line of Shabanov, Ritchie and Emil Heineman recorded just one shot attempt all night while the newly constituted third line of Drouin, Jean-Gabriel Pageau and Simon Holmstrom drew the matchup with McDavid, and therefore wasn\u2019t asked to do much aside from defend.<\/p>\n

The saving grace of the Islanders\u2019 play was on their blue line. All six defensemen were excellent, keeping Edmonton to the outside and making plays with their sticks.<\/p>\n

Behind them, Sorokin tracked every puck, stayed in command of his crease and looked entirely nonplussed under fire. Like so many other games this season, the Islanders do not have a chance in this one without their goaltender.<\/p>\n

And like so many other games this season, that did not matter one iota at the final horn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDMONTON, Alberta \u2014 Put this one on the Vezina Trophy r\u00e9sum\u00e9 for Ilya Sorokin. And, as a matter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5110],"tags":[5976,146,5,277,122,3328,159,5190,5189,4,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-410273","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-islanders","8":"tag-anthony-duclair","9":"tag-edmonton-oilers","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-ilya-sorokin","12":"tag-islanders","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-islanders","15":"tag-newyork","16":"tag-newyorkislanders","17":"tag-nhl","18":"tag-sports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115903232375666625","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}