Varlamov Back on the Shelf

The harsh season that the Colorado Avalanche are enduring continues to be difficult, as their number one goalie, Semyon Varlamov, has suffered a third groin injury this season and has now been shut down for an indefinite period of time.  As of Monday afternoon, the injury is considered to be a day-to-day problem, but it sounds more like he'll be away from the ice for a little while.  More will likely be known in the coming days.

Varlamov was injured at practice on Monday morning and the team has called up Calvin Pickard to take over the starting job for the time being in Denver.  The Avalanche play three times in Week Ten, all at home, against the Predators, Jets and Blues, all three teams ahead of them in the Western Conference race for the playoffs.

Varlamov was taken as the 18th overall pick in this year's draft by Benson and not seen nearly the return that was expected of him in the first third of the season. In 15 appearances this season, the 26-year old Russian keeper has only registered 4 wins and 1 shutout for 10 points, which ranks him 291st among all players in pool scoring, 35th among all goaltenders.

With those kind of rankings, Varlamov would be barely suited to fill the backup role in a lot of pool teams, but he has been given the minutes in Colorado, when healthy, so he should be expected to pick those numbers up.

Overall, thanks to Benson's other goalie, Dallas' Kari Lehtonen, his overall goalie points are only slightly below-average, but the expectation was that Varlamov would be a top end player, somewhere in the 30-point range by now, but even then, it would only barely have Benson out of the basement by a small margin.

An updated list of injuries can be found here.