It shouldn’t have been a surprise, after the way Game 3 went for the Islanders and Semyon Varlamov, to see Ilya Sorokin leading the Islanders onto the ice for warmups before Game 4 Saturday at the Nassau Coliseum.
And when Sorokin calmly and securely handled the first shot of the game from Pittsburgh’s Kasperi Kapanen a minute in, it was pretty evident this game would play out a little differently than Tuesday’s and Thursday’s, when Varlamov allowed questionable goals early in the first period and the Isles went on to lose both.
The Islanders won this one, 4-1, to even the best-of-seven series, 2-2, and Sorokin, who had started Game 1, which the Islanders won, allowed no soft goals and no goals at all until the final minutes of the game when the victory was already secured.