This is the 2023-24 edition — an archived read. Read the 2026-27 report →

Semyon Varlamov

Five hundred and eighty-three games, fifteen seasons, and twenty-three appearances behind the man who took his job.

Season	Team	GP	W	L	OTL	GA	GAA	SO	SA	SV%

2008-09	WSH	6	4	0	1	13	2.37	0	159	.918
2009-10	WSH	26	15	4	6	65	2.55	2	718	.909
2010-11	WSH	27	11	9	5	58	2.23	2	759	.924
2011-12	COL	53	26	24	3	136	2.59	4	1564	.913
2012-13	COL	35	11	21	3	98	3.02	3	1007	.903
2013-14	COL	63	41	14	6	146	2.41	2	2013	.927
2014-15	COL	57	28	20	8	141	2.56	5	1791	.921
2015-16	COL	57	27	25	3	148	2.81	2	1714	.914
2016-17	COL	24	6	17	0	76	3.38	1	745	.898
2017-18	COL	51	24	16	6	128	2.68	2	1595	.920
2018-19	COL	49	20	19	9	136	2.87	2	1496	.909
2019-20	NYI	45	19	14	6	110	2.62	2	1278	.914
2020-21	NYI	36	19	11	4	72	2.04	7	1020	.929
2021-22	NYI	31	10	17	2	87	2.91	2	978	.911
2022-23	NYI	23	11	9	2	60	2.70	2	689	.913
2023-24 so far	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—	—
Career	—	583	272	220	64	1474	2.65	38	17526	.916

This Season So Far

The 2023-24 season has not started. The empty row above is his, and both it and this paragraph fill in on their own from the morning after he first plays: what he has done, what it is worth against his own last season, and the run he is on when the two disagree.

Last Season

11-9-2 in 23 games, .9129, 2.70, two shutouts on 689 shots.

Twenty-three appearances is the fewest of his fifteen seasons, and the .9129 is a hundred points below the man in front of him.

689 shots across 23 games is 30.0 a night — marginally more than Sorokin faced, which is the ordinary pattern for a backup who draws the second half of back-to-backs.

Fifteen seasons, 583 games, a 2.65 career goals-against average.

The Finesse Game

6-2 and 201, and a technique that predates the position’s current orthodoxy.

He plays a reactive, athletic game — deeper than modern coaching prefers, and reliant on getting a limb to pucks rather than on being in front of them when they arrive. At thirty-five that is a harder way to earn a save than it was at twenty-five.

The rebounds are where the age shows. He steers the first shot well and is slower than he was to the second, and a .9129 on thirty shots a night is the arithmetic of that.

He handles the puck competently and is used to do it, which on a slow blue line has some value.

The Intangibles

Twenty-third overall in 2006 to Washington, three organisations, and 583 games across fifteen seasons.

Eight seasons as Colorado’s starter, then the Islanders’ in 2019-20, and then Sorokin; the professional part of the file is that the handover happened without incident.

He is thirty-five and this is a backup’s line on a backup’s workload. What the club is buying is twenty-five starts of competence and a room that has seen him do the difficult version of this before.

What kind of player

The searchable half of the report. The first group is computed from the season's own data; the rest are read out of the prose above, and each one carries the sentence that produced it. A subject the report never raised is simply absent.

a strengthread out of the prose, and claimed
he lacks itraised, and he does not have it

Each computed tag also says how well its measure holds up from one season to the next, because a tag describes a season that has finished and a reader will assume it predicts the one coming. Some do and some do not, and the gap is wide: five-on-five workload repeats well, scoring late does not repeat at all.

puck-handlinga strength· starts the breakout himself
“He handles the puck competently and is used to do it, which on a slow blue line has some value.”
rebound-controlhe lacks it· where the second chance ends up
“He steers the first shot well and is slower than he was to the second, and a .9129 on thirty shots a night is the arithmetic of that.”
plays-deepa strength· takes the net away by occupying it
“He plays a reactive, athletic game — deeper than modern coaching prefers, and reliant on getting a limb to pucks rather than on being in front of them when they arrive.”