Piero Greco is out as goaltending coach for the New York Islanders. Sergei Naumovs is in.<\/p>\n
The Islanders announced on Wednesday that Naumovs is replacing Greco, who was with the club for the last seven-plus seasons.<\/p>\n
Firing a goalie coach during the season is an unusual move and the Islanders are doing so after a 3-3-0 start that includes a 4-3 home win over the San Jose Sharks on Tuesday night. The move to Naumovs can be attached to getting star goalie Ilya Sorokin untracked. Despite stopping 33 of 36 shots Tuesday, Sorokin has struggled overall. The 30-year-old netminder is 2-3-0 with a 3.90 goals-against average and .873 save percentage.<\/p>\n
Greco joined the organization in 2018 for his first stint at the NHL level after previously working with the American Hockey League\u2019s Toronto Marlies. He also worked in the Ontario Hockey League with the Kitchener Rangers, Barrie Colts and Owen Sound Attack.<\/p>\n
\u201cPiero has done a great job for the organization for the last seven years,\u201d Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche told reporters Wednesday. \u201cWe just felt at this time it was the right timing to have a reset with our goalies. There\u2019s obviously a history with Sergei and Ilya, and we just made that decision going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sorokin had four top-10 Vezina finishes with Greco as his coach, including a runner-up nod to Boston\u2019s Linus Ullmark in 2022-23.<\/p>\n
Naumovs, 56, joined the Islanders last year as the goalie coach for their AHL affiliate in Bridgeport, Conn. He has a lengthy history with Sorokin as the two worked together in the goalie\u2019s final two seasons with CSKA Moscow in the KHL before coming to North America.<\/p>\n
Darche said the change to Naumovs was \u201c100 percent\u201d his call. While he didn\u2019t directly address whether he and Sorokin discussed the potential move, Darche added, \u201cIt\u2019s my decision. The players will never tell you, \u2018Hey, I want this coach or that coach. I know he\u2019s had success with Sergei and that\u2019s where we went.\u201d<\/p>\n
Darche also announced that forward Pierre Engvall is expected to be sidelined for the remainder of the season after undergoing ankle surgery Tuesday. Engvall, 29, is already rehabilitating from hip surgery performed this offseason. He had eight goals and 15 points in 62 games last season.<\/p>\n
In other news, Semyon Varlamov is skating on his own and Darche said he is progressing in his recovery from knee surgery. Varlamov, 37, played in only 10 games last season. The Islanders signed David Rittich in July for this season to serve as Sorokin\u2019s backup.<\/p>\n
Why Islanders made this move now<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an interesting move to switch goalie coaches this early in a season, although Sorokin isn\u2019t off to the best start. He is currently sporting a .873 save percentage, and allowed four goals in each of his first four starts, and three in his most recent win over San Jose.<\/p>\n
The move does reunite Naumovs and Sorokin. Naumovs coached at CSKA Moskva in the KHL for six seasons, two of which were with Sorokin. The two worked together from 2018 to 2020 in Russia, and Sorokin posted a record of 54-16-7 with a .937 save percentage in those seasons. \u2014 Jesse Granger, NHL staff writer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Piero Greco is out as goaltending coach for the New York Islanders. Sergei Naumovs is in. The Islanders…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":233532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,5791,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-233531","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-new-york-islanders","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/233532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}