Colorado Avalanche Are In No-Win Situation With Varlamov As Their Goalie

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.