Nashville hosted an individual awards ceremony following the results of the past season of the National Hockey League. For example, Connor McDavid, who continues to nightmare the entire league with his performance in the regular season, received his next Hart Trophy and Ted Lindsay Award, and Patrice Bergeron from the Boston Bruins updated his own record and was recognized as the best forward for the sixth time in his career. defensive plan. The Selkie Trophy, which only Sergey Fedorov and Pavel Datsyuk have managed to win among Russians in the entire history of the league, it's time to rename it in honor of the captain of the Bruins.
But the main view of Russian hockey fans was directed to a different position. Among hockey players from Russia, only one Ilya Sorokin claimed the award — the goalkeeper of the New York Islanders entered the list of finalists for the prestigious Vezina Trophy prize, which is awarded to the best goaltender of the regular season. Alas, Ilya failed to win in this nomination.
According to the results of voting between the general managers of the NHL clubs, which determine the best goalkeeper of the season, Sorokin took second place. The Russian scored 70 points: the leaders of three league clubs put Ilya on the first line, 17 general managers gave him second place, and four more — third. Linus Ullmark won as expected. The Swedish goalkeeper of the Boston Bruins was considered the main favorite in the fight for Vezina-2023 and scored as many as 127 points. The gap is crazy.
The result of the vote was predictable. Even Sorokin himself was sure that not he, but Ullmark would receive Vezina:
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"What do I feel from getting into the top three finalists for "Vezina"? Don't give a damn. Of course it's nice. Found out about it on the Internet. Igor Shesterkin, in my opinion, sent me a link. He says: «Well, you definitely won't win.» Just kidding, it wasn't like that. As a realist, I can say that the percentage is 20 to 80. 20 our chances with Connor Hellebike, 80 with Ullmark. » />Ilya SorokinGoalkeeper, New York Islanders
Helleybike ended up in third place (32 points), while the top eight of the Russians also included Andrey Vasilevsky (6th place, 5 points), Alexander Georgiev (7th place, 3 points) and Igor Shesterkin (8th place, 2 points). Are the results fair? Of course yes. Can you pick on them? No problem. Although Ullmark's victory was predictable, there was some controversy regarding Vezina and its owner this year. For example, what is the principle for recognizing a goalkeeper as the best in the championship: based on the results of his team or on his personal characteristics?
In the first case, Ullmark's advantage was undeniable. His «Boston» had a phenomenal season, becoming the absolute best club in the regular season and setting a number of historical records in the NHL. Linus himself in 49 games played (48 at the start) brought his team 40 wins, having issued two shutouts, and reflected a total of 93.8% of shots, missing an average of 1.89 goals. In terms of the number of victories, Ullmark, along with the Russian Alexander Georgiev from the Colorado Avalanche, became the best in the championship, in terms of the percentage of reflected shots and the reliability coefficient among goalkeepers who have played at least 40 games, the Swede is in the lead. All dry figures say that Ullmark is the best goalkeeper of the season, and therefore Vezina went to him.
On the other hand, opponents of this idea rightly point to Ullmark's influence on the success of the Bruins. “Boston” was extremely powerful in the past regular season, and the goaltender actually did not have to show in all its glory. Linus played reliably, did not let the team down, even scored a goal, but compared to Sorokin and Hellebike, the Swede was not as significant for Boston as his main rivals in Vezina were for the Islanders and Jets, respectively.
This was also noted in the NHL. On the eve of the awards ceremony, the official website of the league published a series of notes with the arguments of their authors and representatives of the editorial department, and on the question of who deserves to become the owner of Vezina, the site's editor-in-chief Bill Price spoke in favor of Sorokin:
«Choosing Ullmark is going down the easy path. I won't be surprised if he wins. But Sorokin meant a lot to the Islanders and was unquestionably the Islanders' best player this season. He's won 31 wins, missed 2, 34 goals and 92.4% saves, and was the NHL's all-time best in shutouts (6), and he had to work hard to get those numbers in. He often made 40 saves per game.Ilya is the main reason the Isles Just think: the Islanders were 10th in the East with 30 games left on February 1. Sorokin started 24 games from that day and was the league's best goaltender in save percentage during that stretch. The Islanders only needed to win, which they did thanks to Sorokin.
But the league's GMs took the easy route, Price noted, and there's nothing wrong with that. It would be strange if they did otherwise. For Sorokin, one should only rejoice. Ilya has made significant progress in the past season and has shown a willingness to develop further. The Islanders are very lucky with the goaltender, and thanks to Ilya, the Islanders can count on a place in the playoffs next season. Along with this, however, the Isles bosses will have to rack their brains over how to keep the Russian at the club. At the end of the 2023/24 season, Sorokin's $4 million cap hit contract will come to an end. It is obvious that the Russian goalkeeper will qualify for a much more solid agreement — both in terms of salary and term. And the absence of «Vezina» this year will hardly affect the situation.