[AP Recap – Game Summary – Event Summary – WashingtonCaps.com Postgame]
Simeon Varlamov is really starting to freak me out.
Coming in to the league at twenty years old and playing lights out in your first few starts is impressive, but not unheard of. If you’re talking about rookies, even goalies, who come to forefront and play prominent roles in their team’s postseason without a ton of NHL experience under their belt, you’re talking about fewer players, but there is some precedent. But to be barely twenty-one years old and facing your team’s biggest historic rival, and to recover from a soft goal that ties the game to stand on your head and be the single biggest reason your team wound up victorious….that’s something that just doesn’t seem right. Something that just doesn’t seem humanly possible – although you can say the same of his highlight reel save on Sidney Crosby, a stop that might be the best I’ve ever seen.
Still, we’re not quite completely sold on Varlamov yet. Why? It’s hard to say. It could be that it simply seems too good to be true. It could be that to get our hopes up too high only to have them dashed by our perceived savior’s struggle against our team’s biggest rival would be almost too much to bear. It could be that even the guys who have done the seemingly impossible and whom Varlamov now seeks to emulate – Cam Ward and Ken Dryden – struggled at points while leading their respective teams to postseason success. No matter why exactly, we’re still sticking with the position that it would be a mistake to assume young Mr. Varlamov is clearly the final missing piece that’s going to one day take the Capitals to Stanley Cup glory. But it’s getting awfully hard to say it and mean it.
Win one game. Do it four three times.