Ilya Sorokin is on everybody’s radar this season.

The 28-year-old netminder went 31-22-7 with a .924 save percentage and a league-leading +51.4 Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx) per Evolving-Hockey in 2022-23 and was the main reason why the New York Islanders returned to the playoffs after missing the previous campaign.

Sorokin’s star-turn performance in 2022-23 has caught the attention of the market, as he will likely enter the new campaign as the consensus betting favorite to win the Vezina Trophy.

With just days to go until training camps open, the affable Russian is sitting around +500 at most sportsbooks, putting him slightly ahead of Igor Shesterkin, Juuse Saros, Connor Hellebuyck and Andrei Vasilevskiy.

It seems a fair price on Sorokin, who finished runner-up to Linus Ullmark for the award last season, and I wouldn’t argue with anybody who thinks a 5/1 payout on the Islanders goaltender is a strong bet, but I will make a case for a different way to back Sorokin before the puck drops on the new campaign.

There’s a little more risk involved, but the upside is much higher on Sorokin to win the Hart Trophy at 80/1 (BetMGM).

Let’s say you’re interested in betting Sorokin to win the Vezina Trophy. That means you think he’s got a decent chance to win the award because +500 carries an implied probability of roughly 16.7 percent.

In other words, you think that there’s a 1-in-6 chance that Sorokin is going to be the best goalie in the league in 2023-24.

For this exercise, let’s assume you’re right and Sorokin has a standout season and wins the Vezina Trophy.

That means he beat out an elite crop of goaltenders, and, in all likelihood, the Islanders made the playoffs.

Only one goaltender since 1981-82 (Sergei Bobrovsky, 2013) won the Vezina Trophy on a non-playoff team.

Right away, this is starting to sound like a decent Hart Trophy portfolio.

Not only would Sorokin have to own an elite statline, but he’d have likely backstopped his unfancied team to the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Those are the kind of stories that voters can get behind when it comes time to vote on the Most Valuable Player.

But now comes the hard part — beating Connor McDavid.

It may be a fool’s errand to try to take on McDavid in this race after he turned the league upside down with a 64-goal, 153-point season in 2022-23, but I’d rather take a shot on a big number than with someone at a shorter price in the chasing pack.

If I beat McDavid, I want to be paid off handsomely for it.

And while a goaltender hasn’t won the Hart Trophy since 2015 (Carey Price) and only two netminders (Price, Jose Theodore in 2002) have won the award since 1999, it was only two years ago that Shesterkin was in the conversation deep into the season.

In all likelihood, McDavid or one of the other favorites (Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon) will win the Hart Trophy.

But of all the long shots in this market, Sorokin is the only one with a legitimate chance of gatecrashing the party.

He is one of the best five or 10 players in the entire league — he just gets overlooked because he’s a goalie.

Sorokin is deserving of his status as the betting favorite to win the Vezina Trophy, and I’m not here to deter anybody from backing him to win the award.

Instead, the point of this exercise is simple: If you think Sorokin is a good bet to be the best goaltender in the NHL this season, you may as well consider a punt on him to be voted as the best player in the league at a much higher number, too.

The pick: Ilya Sorokin to win MVP 80/1 (PointsBet)