Semyon Varlamov Jersey Card

Semyon Varlamov is having a tremendous postseason at the expense of the Washington Capitals in Round 1 after puzzling the Florida Panthers' young stars in the play-in. Signing with the New York Islanders as a free agent in the off-season sure looks like a great move on his part, with Barry Trotz' system doing its part to help the 32-year-old reach the level that's expected from a $5M goalie, but it's a two-way street, and Varlamov is surely doing his part, with opportune saves like this one:

The former Vezina Trophy runner-up (2013-14) has slowly but surely evolved into an elite goaltending, and his international career with Team Russia shows that very well, as he had made his way to the squad at the 2005 World Juniors as an underage third-stringer, then won the silver medal the following season as the official backup to Anton Khudobin and again in 2007 as the starter (ahead of Sergei Bobovsky), and he would repeat the progression with the Men's Teams, first as the third-stringer behind Evgeni Nabokov and Ilya Bryzgalov at the 2010 Olympics, then earning silver as the main guy at the 2010 World Championships and gold as the starter once again at the 2012 Worlds.

It's like he takes his first opportunity to assess the situation quietly, then climbs the ranks and gets successful. The same holds true of his beginnings with the Isles this season, losing his first two games - including getting pulled after surrendering four goals on 19 shots in under 29 minutes against the Edmonton Oilers; he won seven of his next eight starts - the loss coming in overtime.

When all was said and done, with the team plan originally being to platoon Varlamov and Thomas Greiss, #40 played 45 regular-season games while the 33-year-old German appeared in 31; Greiss has yet to appear in the postseason, in part because of Varlamov's staggering statistics:  6-1 record, with a 1.71 GAA and a .932 save percentage despite having not record a shutout yet.

Here he is back in his days with the Colorado Avalanche, sporting their white (away) uniform on card #GJ-SV from Upper Deck's 2014-15 Series 1 collection and UD Game Jersey sub-set:

It features a burgundy game-worn jersey swatch.

As you can perhaps tell from the picture, he has a low stance and centre of gravity in net, as he's 6'2" tall yet his "pounce" stance has his head below the crossbar, which stands at four feet high.

Semyon Varlamov Dual Jersey Card

Although he had a down year ahead of the 2017 Expansion Draft, Colorado Avalanche goalie Semyon Varlamov has really bounced back in an impressive manner in the past year and a half, even if he's statistically not on the level of his Vezina-worthy 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons:

from HockeyDB

He and the team's top line, comprised of Nathan MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog and Mikko Rantanen, have often been the sole bright spots on a team that currently sits tied for last place in its division (yet only four points behind a Wild Card spot, albeit in a gridlock with seven other teams) with 61 points (25-24-11) in 60 games.

The contrast between Varlamov and teammate Philipp Grubauer is also stark:

The two former Washington Capitals were supposed to platoon until the team feels KHL superstar Pavel Francouz is ready to join the main team, but Varlamov seems like he's running with it despite his contract being up at the end of the year.

I strongly feel like he's the Avs' best shot in nets for the next two years, so they might want to re-up him, but if they don't, chances are he'll be traded for a couple of second-rounders to a team that will either lose its own #1 to a trade (Columbus Blue Jackets) or a team (Calgary Flames) whose number one (Mike Smith) is having an inexplicably sub-par season.

I'm a pretty big fan of this card, which showcases Varlamov's NHL history as a member of both the Caps and Avs with a white jersey swatch from each one:

It's card #CL-SV from Upper Deck's 2014-15 SP Game-Used Edition set and Career Legacy sub-set.

Semyon Varlamov Dual Jersey Card

Everything went wrong for the Colorado Avalanche last season, and I predict more of the same this year, with a second-straight last-place finish. This time, though, they will even be surpassed by the Vegas Golden Knights, an expansion team that had a grand total of two players before the expansion draft in late June.

GM Joe Sakic opted to protect Semyon Varlamov instead of Calvin Pickard in a bizarre move, considering the Golden Knights were extremely unlikely to pick a 29-year-old veteran goalie with health issues who has two years left with a $5.9M cap hit when Marc-André Fleury and Petr Mrazek were also available, to say nothing of talented unproven quantities like Philipp Grubauer and Antti Raanta.

It's not like Varlamov doesn't have the tools to succeed; after all, we're talking about a former first-round draft pick (23rd overall, Washington Capitals, 2006) who once finished second in Vezina and fourth in Hart Trophy voting. And goalies using mostly a butterfly style tend to have their hips and groins act up as they enter their 30s, but with proper care can get operated on and continue playing at a high level, so there's the high probability that last season's procedure will give him five more years at elite status.

It's just that Pickard had shown to have similar potential should he find consistency and is young enough to not have had that patch of injury-related hard luck, while Varlamov had been on a four-season slide, statistically-speaking. Of course, a huge chunk of that falls on the Avs being a terrible, terrible team with no defense to speak of during the entirety of Sakic's tenure with the club - and perhaps one can qualify its depth during the Greg Sherman years as questionable as well.

That being said, I've been waiting for years to feature this beautiful card, #TS-SV from Upper Deck's 2013-14 Artifacts set and Treasured Swatches sub-set:

It shows Varlamov wearing the Avs' white (then-away) uniform in a holding position, either while play is in the offensive zone or waiting on a face-off, and features two matching game-worn jersey swatches.

Semyon Varlamov Autographed Card

It hasn't been an easy road to NHL stardom for Semyon Varlamov, but he's on his merry way.

His Juniors career went well, winning two silver medals at the World Juniors, and getting drafted in the first round (23rd overall) by the Washington Capitals in 2006. For the second of his two medals, he shared the net with fellow NHL netminder Sergei Bobrovsky. In Russia, his team was Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, for whom a week ago today marked the first anniversary of last year's airline crash tragedy.

His first few years in the Capitals' system were spent fighting other goalies for ice time, notably José Theodore, but when he was not re-signed, Michal Neuvirth became the de facto #1, making Varlamov expendable. In a genius move, Caps' GM George McPhee traded his rights to the Colorado Avalanche last summer for more than what he would have received as compensation had the Avs signed Varlamov to the same contract as an RFA (a first and a second pick).

In Colorado, Varlamov started the season as the team's starting goalie, but when the team's playoff hopes were dwindling, they turned to Jean-Sébastien Giguère to steer the ship, until an injury forced coach Joe Sacco to revert back to Varlamov, who ended the season on a high note, going 26-24-3 in 53 games, but more importantly, keeping a 2.59 GAA and .913 save percentage, both close to his career totals (2.48 and .915 respectively). I expect an All-Star performance on his part this year, and a place on Russia's 2014 Olympic team. He has a World Championship gold (2012) and silver (2010) to go with his Junior hardware, so he's pretty much a shoe-in already anyway.

Accordingly, this card from In The Game's 2007-08 Between the Pipes set (card #48, Future Stars sub-set) sees him wearing the beautiful Team Russia colours. He signed it for me in person, in black sharpie, during the 2009-10 playoffs, when my hometown Montréal Canadiens beat his Caps in the fifth-biggest upset in NHL history (comparing regular-season points between teams), and which marked the first time ever the eighth seed beat the first seed when down 3-1 in a series.

You'll notice the card spells his name ''Semen'' , but I titled the post ''Semyon''; it's because he registered an official spelling change with the NHL in August 2009, requesting all further appearances of his name be ''Semyon''. According to Wikipedia:

In the Russian alphabet, Varlamov's first name is spelled "Семён." The Russian letter (ё), equates to the sound (yo) in English.