Beyond Ilya Sorokin, do the Islanders offer any high-ceiling fantasy options?

Outlook

Last season:
42-31-9, 4th Metro, 15th overall. Eliminated Round 1 by Carolina, 4-2.
2.95 GF/GP (22nd), 2.65 GA/GP (5th), 15.8 PP% (30th), 82.2 PK% (9th)
49.75 5v5 CF% (19th), 54.83 5v5 GF% (6th), 49.55 5v5 xGF% (20th)

This team will only go as far as Ilya Sorokin takes them. They were anemic on offense for most of the season and improved slightly when Bo Horvat was acquired. Mathew Barzal is the only forward who has a chance of being elite, otherwise this is the same, old boring Islanders. Just the way Lou Lamoriello likes it.

This doesn’t mean you should be completely down on the Isles. But they made the playoffs based on their goaltending and outperformed their possession metrics for that reason, ranking in the lower half in expected goals percentage but finished sixth in actual goals for percentage. This is a team with dependable yet unspectacular players, which translates to low-ceiling fantasy options. As such, Ilya Sorokin – undoubtedly their best player and arguably the best goalie in the league – is their top-ranked fantasy player, followed by Barzal, Horvat and Brock Nelson, who rank outside the top 50.

There is some hope with their stagnant offense in Oliver Wahlstrom, the 11th overall pick from 2018 who appeared in just 35 games last season due to injury. He’s scored 32 goals in 161 career games, which is modest, but he’s also averaged just 12 minutes per game during those three seasons. He started off the 2022-23 season with four points in two games, playing just 9:44 in the season opener, but his ice time crept up to over 13 minutes just prior to his injury. Wahlstrom was paired with Barzal prior to the Horvat trade; there’s definitely potential for Wahlstrom on the top line should Anders Lee stick with Nelson as they’ve done in the past.

The flip side is the Isles’ track record of developing draft picks hasn’t been very good, and there’s no one in their prospect pool who could really surprise, considering they haven’t made a first-round pick since 2019. The third line is passible if Hudson Fasching can continue what he did last season, but they’d be lucky to get any offense out of their ‘Identity Line,’ and you wonder about their physical effectiveness with all of them entering their mid-30’s.

Projected Lineup

Oliver Wahlstrom – Bo Horvat – Mathew Barzal
Anders Lee – Brock Nelson – Kyle Palmieri
Pierre Engvall – Jean-Gabriel Pageau – Hudson Fasching
Matt Martin – Casey Cizikas – Cal Clutterbuck

Adam Pelech – Ryan Pulock
Alexander Romanov – Noah Dobson
Sebastian Aho – Scott Mayfield

Ilya Sorokin – Semyon Varlamov

PP1
Lee – Horvat – Barzal – Nelson – Dobson
PP2
Engvall – Pageau – Palmieri – Wahlstrom – Pulock

Player Rankings

The Hockey News Fantasy Guide Top 3 Point Projections:
Brock Nelson, 73 points
Mathew Barzal, 70 points
Bo Horvat, 65 points

(Purchase your copy of the NHL Fantasy Guide 2023-24 to see all player projections)

Top 300 Ranked Islanders (Full List, including individual player write-ups):
16. Ilya Sorokin, G
52. Mathew Barzal, C
77. Bo Horvat, C
87. Brock Nelson, C
111. Noah Dobson, D
192. Anders Lee, LW
285. Oliver Wahlstrom, RW

Top 300 Ranked Islanders (Banger League) (Full List):
31. Ilya Sorokin, G
76. Bo Horvat, C
92. Mathew Barzal, C
99. Brock Nelson, C
101. Noah Dobson, D
150. Anders Lee, LW
231. Jean-Gabriel Pageau, C
270. Oliver Wahlstrom, RW

All positions courtesy Yahoo Fantasy.

Breakout Star

We’re still waiting for Barzal to return to his Calder-winning form, but as noted above, the biggest potential for a breakout is Oliver Wahlstrom. Prior to his injury, he had crept up the depth chart and played more minutes with each passing game. If he’s healthy and playing top-six minutes, hopefully with Barzal and Horvat, Wahlstrom has the potential to score at least 20 goals. That would at least put him on the fantasy radar as a streaming option.

Regression Candidate

We saw the regression from Bo Horvat after the trade from the Canucks, where he had juiced his shooting percentage from playing the bumper role to great effectiveness on a very talented power play unit. His shooting percentage sank from 21.7 percent to 8.1 percent, and finished with only seven goals in 30 games after scoring 31 in 49 games for the Canucks. The regression was predictable, but it swung too hard the other way.

Horvat will bounce back from 8.1 percent, but it’s highly unlikely he gets anywhere close to 21.7 percent. Scoring 25 goals should be no problem, and double-digit power-play goals is still attainable. Horvat’s usage will be a huge factor; if he’s used in a matchup role like he was late last season, his offensive production will certainly fall. The hope is Barzal and Horvat will be relied upon to generate most of the Isles’ offense with Lee and Nelson providing support.

Goalies

Ilya Sorokin is elite and the top-ranked goalie in the fantasy rankings. His workload is expected to exceed 60 starts with a declining Semyon Varlamov, and no goalie is more reliable than Sorokin, who has an astonishing Quality Start % of .707, according to hockey-reference.com, when the league average is closer to .530. His career .924 SP and 2.34 GAA ranks second and third, respectively, over the past three seasons, trailing only Linus Ullmark in SP and Ullmark and Jeremy Swayman – last year’s Jennings-winning duo – in GAA.

Sorokin is the type of goalie you draft and forget. He’s safe to play in every matchup even if the wins may be more difficult to come by thanks to the quantity of saves and the quality of his starts. Sorokin’s floor is extremely high, about as good as Andrei Vasilevskiy or Igor Shesterkin’s, even though the Isles are in a lower tier.