This piece will be the last in my series of player profiles, where I’ll give some thoughts on the performance of a member of the New York Islanders this season. This article will focus on Semyon Varlamov.
Signed in the offseason to take over for Robin Lehner, Varlamov had a strong first season with the Islanders.
In the past, Varlamov has been inconsistent from year to year and considering how rock solid New York’s goaltending tandem was the year prior, it was going to be a difficult task for Varlamov to replicate that success. That said, he performed quite well for the most part, was consistent enough and usually gave the Islanders a chance to win this year.
He was certainly stronger in 2019 than he was in 2020, posting a 14-3-3 record in his first 20 games, along with a .920 save percentage. As the year progressed and the Islanders started to slump, so did Varlamov. In 2020, he went a 5-11-3 with a .908 save percentage, which isn’t bad, but he did end very poorly, allowing four goals in each of his final four starts.
Next year, I’d expect Varlamov to carry the bulk of the work at the beginning of the year, assuming Ilya Sorokin does start in the NHL. Should Sorokin perform as expected though, it’s likely that the two netminders could be splitting games by the end of the season, similar to what we saw this year with Varlamov and Thomas Greiss, and the year prior with Lehner and Greiss.
While I certainly preferred Lehner, this was a solid season for Varlamov. Despite a poor end to the year, he at least met expectations and hopefully he's able to repeat his consistency next season.
Here's today's poll (results and discussion will be posted on the weekend):
Assuming Ilya Sorokin starts the year with the Islanders, how many games do you expect Semyon Varlamov to start next season?
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