Islanders' Ilya Sorokin reveals why his father doesn't watch his NHL games - "After that he stopped coming"

New York Islanders star Ilya Sorokin is one of the NHL’s top goaltenders. Fans come to the arena to watch him play, but his father rarely watches him play live. His parents live in Moscow while Sorokin plays in New York; during the season, they follow his games from afar.

In a June 25 interview with LOD, Sorokin said his family visits him during the summer.

“Well, they come to visit me. Mom, Dad, Mom and sister usually come. It just so happens that they come in the summer, and Dad at the end of the season,” Sorokin said (translated from Russian via Google).

Sorokin was born in Mezhdurechensk, Russia, where his father worked as a miner. He was asked if his father had never attended an NHL Father’s Day event.

"Never once," Sorokin said. "It's just...getting to America isn't exactly simple. You have to plan everything ahead. You... I don't know...maybe they announce the Father's Day dates early, but I always missed that window. And I don't think he's super into it anyway."

Ilya Sorokin also shared that his father, Igor, finds it too stressful to watch in person. This started when Sorokin was 17. A fan shouted at him during a game after a goal was scored, and his father heard the comments and got upset.

“When I was 17, playing in the MHL, there was this game where we nearfly got into a fight (with fans)," Sorokin said." They scored on me, and fans started swearing. He heard it and lost his cool. After that, he stopped coming to my games."

Now, his father avoids watching live altogether. Still, there was one rare moment when his father came to see him play live in the NHL.

In March 2023, Ilya Sorokin’s father made a rare trip to see him play in New York. It was the first time he watched Sorokin play in the NHL, and Sorokin made 22 saves that night as the Islanders won 4-1.

“He was very nervous,” Sorokin said after the game, via nypost.com.

Ilya Sorokin says long bus rides as a kid helped him grow in hockey

Back in 2023, Ilya Sorokin shared how he went from scoring goals as a kid to stopping them in the NHL. At age five, he started as a forward but switched to goalie by seven.

“I don’t know why I did it,” Sorokin said, via NHL.com.

He moved from Mezhdurechensk to Novokuznetsk at 12 to join a KHL system. He feels the long bus rides and living away from home made him stronger.

"It was not bad for kids. It was a fun time," Sorokin added. "Very good time, very good memories."

On April 6, Sorokin was a part of a special NHL record. Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin scored his 895th career goal against him, breaking Wayne Gretzky's 894-goal record.

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Edited by John Maxwell