The New York Islanders announced a three-year contract extension for goaltender Ilya Sorokin last week, worth $4 million per year. The deal was announced at the same time as extensions for Anthony Beauvillier, Casey Cizikas and Kyle Palmieri.
If you’re interested in reading some thoughts on the other three contract extensions, you can do so here:
Sorokin came to the Islanders with a ton of hype. He’d been dominant in Russia and despite his age, he was viewed as one of the best goaltending prospects in the world.
In his rookie NHL season, he didn’t disappoint. After a bit of a slow start, Sorokin started to take on a larger workload as the year went on. He finished the regular season with a .918 save percentage in 22 games and even went onto play in seven playoff games with the Islanders, managing an even better .922 save percentage.
Sorokin adjusted so well that the idea of dealing Semyon Varlamov while his value was high and moving forward with Sorokin should’ve at least been talked about by team management. Allowing Sorokin to temporarily take the starting role in the playoffs as well showed how much faith head coach Barry Trotz has in him.
As for the contract, it was safe to assume Sorokin would get a short to mid-range deal, likely somewhere between two and four years. While he certainly does project to be the team’s future starting goalie, he still only has a limited sample size of NHL work to go off. From Sorokin’s perspective as well, his value would certainly be higher in a few years if he can continue with the same level of play until then, so signing a long-term deal right now just wouldn’t make sense.
Price-wise, $4 million is fair. When you look at the majority of netminders who've signed a new contract in their mid-20s, after having success upon entering the league but in a limited sample size, you see a general price range of between $3 and $4.5 million. For some examples, look at Jordan Binnington, Tristan Jarry, Elvis Merzlikins and Alex Nedeljkovic.
The Islanders could’ve likely kept the price down a bit by signing a two-year deal instead, potentially worth $3.5 - $3.75 million per year. That said, it makes more sense to pay a bit more to add the extra year, especially when there’s no reason to doubt that Sorokin will continue to have NHL success.
I think this is a fair deal for the Islanders but it has the potential to be a major win, provided that Sorokin maintains the same level of play and continues to take on a larger role with the team.
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