Islanders goaltending duo can help them survive injury crisis

It’s the goalies, stupid.The Islanders can and should worry about their special teams and how their defense is constructed and whether their offense can keep up without Mat Barzal and Anthony Duclair and all of the minutiae within each of those buckets.That’s all fine and good, and it all matters plenty.But let’s talk bottom line here for a moment.

Staying in the playoff race from now until whenever it is that the Islanders get healthy is about Ilya Sorokin and Semyon Varlamov.And as bad as everything else has looked, there is not really much to worry about on that front.All the way back when the season started, some four weeks ago, Sorokin was the biggest question hanging over the Islanders.

There was his offseason back surgery; there were his struggles down the stretch and in the playoffs last season; there was his eight-year contract, which would instantly become an albatross if he could not recover well.That all went away pretty fast.Heading into Thursday night’s match in Ottawa, where Varlamov was expected to start for the first time since last Wednesday’s loss in Columbus, Sorokin had compiled a .921 save percentage and 2.35 GAA through his first eight starts.That is, almost exactly, on a par with the .924 save percentage and 2.34 GAA he had in 2022-23, when the Islanders made the playoffs almost entirely because of how well Sorokin played — including over the late-season stretch when Barzal was out injured.It was about the goalies then.

It is about the goalies now.“He’s one of the best goalies in the game,” none less than Patrick Roy said of Sorokin last week.There is a little more room for concern over Varlamov, who came into Thursday with a .876 save percentage and negative-1.93 goals saved above expected, per Evolving Hockey, over his first five starts.The early-season plan was to split starts evenly between the two, in no small part because of the belief that playing nearly every night had a negative impact on Sorokin over time.That ...