Six hundred and seventy-six days ago Tuesday, Semyon Varlamov was in net for a mostly forgettable overtime loss in Washington.
One of the many great mysteries of everything that’s happened since that afternoon is that Varlamov was not declared injured until two games later.
He backed up Ilya Sorokin the next day against Buffalo and sat on the bench in Montreal for another overtime loss three days later.
Only then did the Islanders begin to hold him out with what was initially called a lower-body injury.
It is almost miraculous that those days did not mark the end of Varlamov’s NHL career.
Nearly two years and two partial knee replacements later, the now-38-year-old Varlamov led the Islanders onto the Madison Square Garden ice Tuesday night, his first time starting a regular-season game since an injury that seemed almost certain to keep him from doing exactly that ever again.
“Everything feels great. Everything feels 100 percent,” Varlamov, two bulky knee pads in tow, said after an eventual 5-2 loss to the Rangers. “Nothing holds me back, which is great news.”
While Varlamov will want more performance-wise — he gave up three goals on 22 shots before the Rangers scored twice into an empty net — if there was ever a night in which a player was above criticism, this was it.
It likely didn’t help either that the Rangers took until 6:40 into the game to take their first shot — an Oliver Bjorkstrand slapper that Varlamov admitted surprised him, and which went in — or that it took until 12:12 for another shot, which Varlamov saved from Mika Zibanejad.
“When you haven’t played a game for a while, of course, so many thoughts going through your head,” Varlamov said. “How are you gonna perform tonight, what’s gonna happen and just a thousand thousand thoughts going through your head during the day and before the game.”
That piece of the equation, presumably, will fade as the novelty of Varlamov playing fades into the rhythms of a season. It is, though, utterly remarkable that he is on the ice in a professional capacity.
The Post has been unable to find another example of an athlete in any of the four major professional U.S. sports who returned from two partial knee replacements.
The procedure generally entails replacing only the damaged part of the knee, leaving the rest of it intact.
Dustin Pedroia, the former MVP second baseman for the Red Sox who suffered a severe knee injury in 2017, underwent a series of procedures in an attempt to return to play before getting his knee partially replaced in 2020.
The surgery, Pedroia said at the time, meant he would never play again, “because of the fear that it breaks and the rest of my life would be severely impacted by it.”
When reached on Tuesday, Pedroia said in a text that he would be rooting for Varlamov.
“Semyon will be fine!” Pedroia told The Post. “With the partial replacement, the big concern is pounding from impact like jogging or running. Skating is actually good for the joints cause it builds quad muscles and legs fire to keep pressure off the joint! And him being a goaltender shouldn’t be an issue at all! This is cool to see, I will be pulling for him!!!”
Islanders general manager Mathieu Darche said last week that the club doesn’t anticipate needing to do any special monitoring of Varlamov.
The team’s doctors, he said, were stunned after doing annual physicals this year.
“They’re like, I don’t know what to tell you. This is extremely impressive,” Darche recalled.
Without any apparent reason to slow down, the Islanders went ahead with Varlamov as their backup goaltender this season. He got through 1 ½ preseason games, and DeBoer has said the plan is for him to start “at least” 30 games behind Ilya Sorokin.
The first one, though, was particularly special.
“As his teammate, his friend, it’s just so awesome to see,” said Kyle Palmieri, who spent last season rehabbing his torn ACL alongside Varlamov. “I had a front row seat to watch him come in and prepare his body and just, day in and day out, I think he just found a way to enjoy that process. Take it day by day and here he is. It’s so cool to be a part of it, and as a group and as a room, we’re thrilled to have him back.”
