Colorado Avalanche Are In No-Win Situation With Varlamov As Their Goalie
Semyon Varlamov’s tenure with the Colorado Avalanche is one of extreme uncertainty
The Colorado Avalanche picked their horse. Semyon Varlamov, fresh off another off-season surgery, will have the net again in 2017-2018 after losing it to Calvin Pickard last year. While there’s no denying that injury contributed to his underwhelming season(s), his ability to stay healthy isn’t the only uncertainty surrounding Varlamov.
Varlamov either wins games or he loses them. While that bit of analysis is obvious enough to make Peter “this game will be at least 1-0” McNabb roll his eyes, it’s meant to illustrate that there is rarely any middle ground in Varlamov’s game.
He’s almost always the best player on the ice. Only sometimes it’s for the wrong team.
And that type of uncertainty in net poses a dilemma for a team, not to mention a franchise, riddled with as many question marks as the Colorado Avalanche. Is he going to steal games and create the illusion the team is better than it is? Or will he cost this young team games they could win?
Either way, having Varlamov as the #1 goalie this season is likely to be a no-win scenario for the Colorado Avalanche. Anyone who’s watched him play would likely agree that his play is mercurial. To see just how up and down it is, I conducted a little research based on his save percentage.
Methodology
The starting point is Hockey Abstract‘s concepts of quality starts (QS) and really bad starts (RBS). A QS is a start where a goalie’s save percentage (SV%) is at or above the league average (914 this year among goalies with 20+ starts) OR or 885 when facing 20 or fewer shots. An RBS is one where the goalie’s SV% is 850 or lower. Hockeyreference.com keeps tracks of these and related numbers.
Essentially, these stats use SV% to determine how often a goalie gives his team a chance to win. Save percentage isn’t necessarily the best statistic to measure a goalie’s worth, but it’s the best one I know of that is tracked game by game.
QS and RBS are insightful, but can be overly broad. Stopping 17 of 19 shots earns a QS, while stopping 17 of 20 earns an RBS. At the same time, there’s no distinction between a 17/19 night and a 40/40 night. Both are quality starts.
To better grasp the type of starts Varlamov has given the Colorado Avalanche, I modified these concepts into five categories based on SV%, which I labeled as letter grades: A) 930 and above; B) 915 – 929; C) 900 – 914; D) 851 – 899; and F) 850 and under.
It made sense to break up the categories at the current average 914, and 900 and 930 are nice round numbers roughly 2 standard deviations away from this year’s average. Any errors are my own.
I then broke down Varlamov’s tenure with the Colorado Avalanche into these five categories. The results, as expected, indicate that Varlamov will be very good or very bad very often. He won’t be in between for many games.
The only real question, based on the data, is which extreme he’ll be in more often this season.
A Little in the Middle
Varlamov has started 282 regular season games in six seasons with the Colorado Avalanche. Of those, 111 fall into the middle three categories of 851 – 929. That means just under 40% of his starts are not in the best or worst category.
The corollary is that in 6 out of every 10 games, Varlamov is either excellent, or very bad.
And it gets worse when the categories break down further.
There is a close split between B and C games (23-28) – his two least common results. Perhaps the relatively small range contributes to this outcome, and it’s possible the nature of SV% pushes things towards the poles in individual games.
Either way, Varlamov has played only 51 games in which he posted a 900 – 929 SV%. That’s only 18% of his starts with the Colorado Avalanche. This shocked me, so I did a quick comparison with new back-up Jonathan Bernier. In 3 of his 4 seasons he’s been above 24%, with one extreme outlier of 11%
Varlamov, on the other hand, has been in the 15 – 18% range in all but one season. Guess which year at 23% elevates his career average nearly 2% (2013-14). Given how often he’s in that range, it’s reasonable to assume a degree of continuity going forward.
What stands out is that Varlamov’s best year is worse than all but one of Bernier’s.
The bottom line is that Varlamov is highly unlikely to be in the middle on any given night. Given his career rate, and Colorado Avalanche GM’s recent comments that he wants Varlamov to play about 50 games this year, the Avalanche will likely get B or C calibre Varlamov only 8 or 9 times.
Which means that Colorado will get one of two Varlamovs in the remaining 40+ games.
4-LOMov
One of the two most likely candidates is 4-LOMov, a rather cruel nickname I – and probably some others – came up with a couple years back. While the moniker might resonate with Star Wars fans, it was mostly born of frustration during one of the stretches where Varlamov gave up 4 goals against probably less often than it felt.
44 of 282 starts with the Colorado Avalanche meet the criteria of an F. It’s a little bit unsettling that he has only 7 fewer games below 850 than he does between 900-929. He also has 60 starts that qualify as Ds, his second most common result.
This means that 104 of his 282 games have ended with a SV% under 900. That’s almost 2 out of every 5 games. He’s been in the pretty bad to downright awful range more than twice as often as he’s been in the slightly below to slightly above average range.
That’s bad news for a young team that’s likely to make a lot of mistakes. There’s much more variation season to season in his D and F games than in B and C, making any sort of projection troublesome. His average is about 37%, with a high of 55% and a low of 18%
Going off Sakic’s 50 games target, Varlamov’s career average suggests that he’ll be below 900 roughly 18 times this season, though with a wide margin of error.
That is ugly.
But there’s always another side to the coin.
Varly
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The guy that Colorado Avalanche fans love. The one whose name rains from the stands after he makes flurries of game saving stops or earns another well deserved first star. The guy with the best single season in franchise history, who is as close to unbeatable as a goalie can be.
127 of Varlamov’s starts with this franchise fall into the top category of 930 and above. It’s by far the most likely result when he takes the net, occurring more than twice as often as the 2nd most common (which are Fs). Varly is the guy that the Avalanche have had a remarkable 45% of the time in the past six years.
Coupled with his 23 career B games, that’s over 53% of the time he’s good to unbelievable. Mostly the latter.
Like he was in 2013-14, where 58% of his games were As and another 15% were Bs.
Varly stole that entire season.
Unfortunately, Varly is a big reason the Avalanche spent the past three years convinced they were a top team. That unbelievable year catalyzed an overvaluing of the team’s state and is a big reason behind many of their poor personnel decisions since.
If this Varlamov shows up again, it could be real trouble for a Colorado Avalanche team that may finally have accepted they aren’t what they thought they were. And based on his history, he could be in around 22 or 23 times in the 50 games he’s penciled in for.
Conclusion
Protecting Semyon Varlamov in the expansion draft has put the Colorado Avalanche in a difficult position. Over 80% of his career starts with this franchise have either been over 930 or under 900. There’s no doubt that he is going to win games by himself this year.
It’s just not clear which team he’s going to win them for — the Avalanche, or their opposition.
And whatever the case, his play is liable to cloud the true state of the team. The two most damaging scenarios occur if the goalie and the skaters are on opposite wavelengths. If everyone is bad or good there’s little worry.
But if Varlamov is significantly better or worse than the skaters, it could spell trouble.
Next: Avs Need to Sign Zadorov Immediately
The bottom line is that the only predictable thing about Varlamov’s play is that it’s going to be amazing or poor. History suggests he won’t be in the middle very often.
All that’s left to see is which one shows up this season. And how that impacts the direction the front office takes the team in.