After emerging as a star with the New York Islanders, Sorokin became one of very few goalies in recent history to earn an eight-year contract.

• Player Overview
• Comparables
• Final Analysis

Ilya Sorokin became the first 2024 UFA to sign an extension this summer, agreeing to an eight-year contract with the New York Islanders, which carries an $8.25 million cap hit.

The deal will kick in for the 2024-25 season, at the conclusion of Sorokin’s current contract. His extension comes with a no-movement clause for the first half of the deal, before becoming a partial no-trade clause in 2028.

While projections for 2024 UFAs won’t be out until much closer to next summer’s free agency period, a contract analysis article will be released for players who sign an extension beforehand.

Player Overview

Ilya Sorokin was already being talked about as the New York Islanders’ future in goal before he even made the jump to North America.

After being selected in the third round of the 2014 NHL Draft, Sorokin spent the next six years in Russia and solidified himself as a star in the KHL. He signed with the Islanders in July of 2020, joining the team for the shortened 2021 COVID season.

While Sorokin was mainly a backup to Semyon Varlamov in his first NHL season, he still performed well in a limited capacity, posting a .918 save percenagte in 22 regular season games while getting into playoff action as well.

It was in the 2021-22 season where Sorokin really took over though, playing 52 games with the team and posting an outstanding .925 save percentage.

Then this past season, the netminder took on an even larger workload, playing 62 games and managing a .924 save percentage, which led him to a second-place finish in Vezina Trophy voting.

Sorokin has become the Islanders’ MVP and considering he’s turning just 28 years old next month, he’s poised to be one of the NHL’s best goalies for a long time to come.

Comparables

Below we take a look at comparables for Sorokin’s deal, to get a sense of whether it was an overpayment, an underpayment, or a fair deal. Comparables will include goalies who were a similar age at the time of signing, and posted similar stats.

Each table will include the comparable goaltenders’ save percentage in their signing year, and over their career. It’ll also include their cap hit in the first year of their contract, and their adjusted cap hit on an $87.5M salary cap, as projected for the 2024-25 season (when Sorokin’s deal will begin).

7/8 YEARS

Maximum-term deals are pretty much exclusively reserved for the NHL’s best goaltenders. That said, Sorokin’s stats put him in that category.

Looking at the goalies listed, almost all had a signing year save percentage of above .920, and every single goalie had a career save percentage of at least .919 when signing. Sorokin’s .924 save percentage both in his signing year, and over his career, certainly puts him in this class.

As for determining whether Sorokin’s $8.25M cap hit comes in at a reasonable range, it’s not quite as easy (based on the small sample size of comparables).

We know there’s definitely a correlation between experience and price, given the highest paid comparables all had significantly more career games played than goalies lower down the table. That said, Vasilevskiy, Rask, Schneider and Gibson all also had less than 250 career games played (while the likes of Price, Lundqvist and Bobrovsky had over 450 games). So the range was going to be between Gibson’s $6.9M adjusted cap hit (for an $87.5M salary cap), and Vasilevskiy’s $10.2 adjusted cap hit. Trying to differentiate between the goalies is tricky, though.

What we should make note of is that while Gibson’s adjusted cap hit was just $6.9M, it also kicked in right before COVID hit, with no previous knowledge that the cap wouldn’t rise much in the coming years. So Gibson’s adjusted cap hit is significantly lower than it otherwise would’ve been and realistically, Sorokin’s deal was never going to come in below Gibson’s. That said, his numbers were very similar to those of Gibson, and with less experience as well, it’s difficult to point to a reason he should be much higher than Gibson on an eight-year deal.

Even with Schneider’s $7.35M adjusted cap hit, there aren’t a ton of signs that Sorokin should’ve been much higher. Each goalie signed their deal a year out and were 29 years old for the first season of the deal, with incredibly similar numbers and experience. That said, Schneider did start just 55 percent of his team’s games in his signing year, which was significantly lower than every other goalie listed, including Sorokin.

On the flip side though, there aren’t huge justifications for why Sorokin should’ve gotten a lot less than Vasilevskiy. While the netminder was coming off a Vezina Trophy win at the time of signing, I don’t know how much weight that holds, given Sorokin just finished second in Vezina voting before signing. Sorokin also had the lower signing year stats, though he did have quite a bit less NHL experience.

Rask is another great example, with nearly identical career games played. He had better numbers both in his signing year and career, but those numbers came at a time in which the league-average save percentage was .912, rather than .904.

The reality is Sorokin could’ve ended up anywhere within this range and there would’ve been justification for it. Fun fact as well: if you find the average adjusted cap hit between the four realistic comps in Vasilevskiy, Rask, Schneider and Gibson, it would’ve been $8.49M.

So a deal at $8.25M when the expected range was from around $7M on the low end up to $10M on the high end is certainly fair value for New York.

6 YEARS

Just for comparison as well, here are some comps for 6 years deals as well, to provide justification for Sorokin getting maximum term. While almost every comp in the seven to eight-year range had nearly a .920 save percentage both in their signing year and over their career, that wasn’t the case for goalies taking six-year deals. Obviously, the same can be said about goalies getting less than six years at Sorokin’s age as well.

While there are always going to be some outliers like Philipp Grubauer, who did have the stats to warrant a max-term deal on paper, every other comp listed for a six-year deal had lower stats, even if they had a high percentage of starts in their signing year.

As a result, if there was anyone skeptical about an eight-year deal for Sorokin rather than something in the range of six years, the comps pretty clearly point to the fact that Sorokin belonged in the maximum-term group.

Final Analysis

Over the last two years, Ilya Sorokin has established himself as one of the best goaltenders in the world. He took on a larger workload this season and had the same success as the year prior, being the main reason the Islanders got to the playoffs to begin with.

A maximum-term deal for Sorokin was pretty clearly deserved and while there were comps that would’ve suggested his $8.25M cap hit could’ve been slightly lower, there were certainly also comps that would’ve suggested he could get quite a bit more money.

Locking up Sorokin is a massive win for the Islanders, and the price comes in at a fair range, and potentially even as a bit of an underpayment.