The Islanders’ initial diagnosis on Ilya Sorokin was, evidently, a tad optimistic.
Sorokin was not back for the Islanders’ first game after the holiday break, as had initially been expected.
Instead, the netminder was placed on injured reserve with a lower-body injury ahead of the Islanders’ match against the Rangers on Saturday, with Marcus Hogberg continuing to back up David Rittich as an emergency recall.
Coach Patrick Roy said that there was no setback for Sorokin, who worked on the ice with goaltending coach Sergei Naumovs before the Islanders skated Saturday morning.
“Right now [he] looks good,” Roy said. “Is he gonna play tomorrow? Probably not. But we feel like he’ll be back pretty soon. He’s feeling better every day.”
Sorokin will travel to Columbus with the Islanders on Sunday when they face the Blue Jackets on the second end of a back-to-back, but the plan is for Rittich to play both games, Roy said.
It’s possible that Sorokin will be ready to play on Tuesday against the Blackhawks when the Islanders wrap up the short two-game trip, but Roy did not say definitively one way or the other.
The injured reserve designation is mostly a formality for Sorokin, who is eligible to be activated on Sunday, seven days after his retroactive designation, dated Dec. 20.
While the big-picture situation on Sorokin still seems relatively optimistic — the Islanders will have dodged a bullet if he returns on Tuesday, or even if he comes back Thursday at home against Utah — the situation still looks murkier than it did before the break.
In announcing that Sorokin would miss the last game before the NHL’s holiday break, an eventual 2-1 win Tuesday over the Devils, the Islanders referred only to a “nagging issue” and said he was expected back after the break.
As for Rittich, he played both games of a back-to-back four times last season with the Kings, winning three of the four. That did not appear to factor into the Islanders’ decision though.
“I’m worried about [Saturday night],” Roy said. “You could ask me that same question tomorrow if you want to. Right now, it’s about playing the Rangers. Everybody’s in the same position, nobody has touched the ice for the last three days. So I told the guys it’s about focus and energy. Make sure we’re smart about the length of our shifts and ready to play a strong game.”
