EAST MEADOW, NY — No one would have blamed Semyon Varlamov if he packed it up and called it a career. Even his general manager, Mathieu Darche.
But the New York Islanders’ veteran netminder simply was not ready to call it quits, and it was that mindset which fueled him throughout an arduous rehab process following two knee replacement surgeries.
“I wasn’t ready to retire mentally. I just wasn’t there,” the 38-year-old Varlamov said after participating in the Islanders’ first day of training camp. “There were definitely some days it was on my mind when things were not going well. And then with rehab, we had a lot of setbacks, so I was thinking maybe this is it; I won’t be able to come back. But you wake up the next morning and tell yourself you’re just not ready to retire. I’m not there yet, I guess.
“I still have a lot of respect and love for the game, and I want to be around this team. This team is looking great with the younger guys coming in and the older guys. So this is very exciting, this whole thing… I want to be part of it longer.”
Ask anyone around the Islanders organization, and they will tell you that it is literally unbelievable that Varlamov is here at training camp.
“I don’t want to harp on it, but the work that Varly’s put in is really impressive,” Darche said. “It’s almost inspiring to our guys because he could’ve rode into the sunset, right? Just collected the last two years of his contract and, hey, he’s had a great career. But the way he’s worked, and he feels great, let’s see how he feels now.”
Varlamov last appeared in a regular-season game for the Islanders nearly two years ago, on Nov. 29, 2024. Not long after, he underwent those procedures, though the player or team never revealed a specific date.
Then came the radio silence. He was initially forecasted to be ready for training camp last season, but that never came to fruition. The Islanders brought in David Rittich to back up Ilya Sorokin last year, then brought in Vitek Vanecek as an insurance policy this summer.
“It was a process. Just take it one day at a time,” Varlamov said. “Wake up the next morning and do it again. I gave myself one year to get through it, and then I was hoping that after one year, I would be able to feel 100%. That’s what happened. The biggest challenge for me was that I had no timeline. We didn’t really know how long it would take to finish the rehab and then feel 100% because the type of surgeries I had done, the people who are doing it are not professional hockey players… It was kind of a crazy idea. A risky idea. But I took a risk, had to do a lot of rehab, and then had to be very patient about the whole thing.”
He continued to toil away, returning to practice with the team in March, then appearing in two playoff games with the Islanders’ AHL affiliate in Bridgeport later that spring.
“It was very important to play,” Varlamov said. “I feel like if I didn’t play, there’s no chance the team would give me a chance to be a part of this training camp.”
And so, here he is, prepping for what is potentially his 18th NHL season, his seventh on the ice with the Islanders, and his sixth as Sorokin’s invaluable confidant.
“It’s a long process I had to go through physically and mentally,” Varlamov said. “There’s a lot of ups and downs, a lot of setbacks. I expected that I would be back sooner, but it’s OK. I’ll take that I came back and am finally feeling good and here for the first day of training camp.”
For more on Semyon Varlamov and the Islanders, visit AMNY.com
