Islanders 12 minutes of chaos surrounding Ilya Sorokin

Ilya Sorokin was traded and then not traded all in the span of a few minutes, and in the meantime, New York Islanders fans scrambled to understand what was going on.

Ilya Sorokin is easily the best goalie not playing in the NHL. The New York Islanders third-round draft pick from 2014 has had season after season of video game-like stats over in the KHL.

Over 242 regular season KHL games, Sorokin has averaged a 1.70GAA and 0.930SV%. Add a 1.41GAA and a 0.938SV% as well as a Gagarin Cup with a playoff MVP in 2018-19 and a KHL best goaltender award in 2015-16. And his KHL contract is set to expire at the end of the season.

The Islanders definitely want him to make the jump to North America as soon as possible. They went to great lengths to ensure it by not only bringing in a Director of goaltending, something no other NHL has, but they also brought in Sorokin’s buddy Semyon Varlamov to ease his transition to the Island.

So when rumors swirled that the Islanders had traded Sorokin’s right’s to the Chicago Blackhawks everyone was incredibly confused and a bit angry. For a few minutes at least.

12 Minutes of Chaos

It first started by a tweet from Sergei Fedotov who indicated that Soroki’s NHL rights will soon be traded to the Chicago Blackhawks. But that claim was almost immediately refuted by Igor Eronko, saying that Sorokin was close to a deal with the Isles.

Trading Sorokin away didn’t make much sense to most of us. After bringing in Varlamov over keeping Robin Lehner it seemed clear that the future of the crease belonged to Sorokin. So long as he wanted it.

And then NHL Insider Darren Dreger reported that Sorokin’s rights had indeed been traded to the Chicago Blackhawks after all.

And then all hell broke loose. Why in the world had the Islanders, now according to one of the most respected insiders, traded away the best goalie outside of the NHL? Why? Why Lou? Why?!

After all of the overtures. After all of the olive branches. After all those years of waiting it was gone. Sorokin was on his way to joining former Islanders goalie Robin Lehner in the windy city.

This team needed to add players of talent to the roster in order to join the top teams in the league. Trading away talented players was going backward. It was exactly the opposite of what the Islanders needed, and fans weren’t happy about it. As warranted.

Except it wasn’t true. Twelve minutes later Dreger took back his report of a trade.

That was perhaps the worst 12 minutes Isles Twitter has been in a long time.

Although it’s clear from the Eronko tweet at 2:38, that we all saw, that this entire situation could have been avoided. The proper information was out there. Dreger just had bad sources, or incomplete information and ran with it anyways during the panic of the trade deadline.

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Either way, Ilya Sorokin, for now, remains in the New York Islanders system. And if Igor Eronko’s reports are right, a contract is close to being agreed to between the two sides. So breathe. Everything is fine. For now.