Tuesday was Varlamov’s fourth start this season; his previous a 3-2 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Kings at UBS Arena on Oct. 22. He entered Tuesday 0-1-2 with a 2.25 goals-against average and .899 save percentage. He helped New York extend another game past regulation and wasn’t about to be denied a win again, not after going 712 days without one that included time of serious doubt as to whether he’d ever be able to return.\u00a0<\/p>\n
His teammates weren’t about to deny him, either. Matthew Schaefer<\/a>, the face of the franchise since being selected with the No. 1 pick in the 2025\u00a0NHL Draft, played every second of the extra period, becoming the first skater on record to skate all five minutes of an overtime period (since 2009-10 when real-time time on ice data was officially tracked).<\/p>\n “He’s a warrior,” Schaefer said. “To see everything he’s been through and be able to come back, he looks so good in there. \u2026 He’s an amazing guy, but he’s such an amazing player too.”<\/p>\n The Islanders failed to win it on a power play in overtime, but Kyle Palmieri<\/a> and Bo Horvat<\/a>\u00a0scored in the first two rounds of the shootout. Varlamov poke-checked Ryan O’Reilly’s attempt away in the first round before Filip Forsberg<\/a> shot wide. Horvat’s goal sparked the wild celebration, teammates jumping up and down around Varlamov.<\/p>\n “It was good to see both guys score in the shootout,” Varlamov said. “Very special moment. \u2026 Like I’ve said, I love the game and I wanted to stay in this league longer because I’m just enjoying the process, playing the games, practices, being around the team. When it’s over, it’s over. You’re not part of this league anymore. So, I want to hang out for a little bit longer. The last two years was a real grind. Of course, I went through some tough times, like I felt like I wouldn’t be able to be back. You just keep pushing yourself every day a little bit harder and keep doing things that you do and you control.<\/p>\n “It took me a long time. I’m glad this organization, like (general manager) Mathieu Darche and the coaching staff and the ownership give me this opportunity. I’m very thankful and I appreciate that they believe in me and give me this chance. I’m just humbled and very, very thankful.”<\/p>\n NHL.com independent correspondent Russell Vannozzi contributed to this story<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tuesday was Varlamov’s fourth start this season; his previous a 3-2 overtime loss to the Los Angeles Kings…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":949584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-949583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/949584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}