The Colorado Avalanche went into their first game with a lot of questions in the balance. One of the big ones was how will goalie Semyon Varlamov bounce back after having season-ending surgery last year and missing eight months of hockey.
The answer is that he recorded a .949 save percentage by stopping 37 of the 39 shots he faced. We’re going to focus on that shots total in a minute, but for now — he stopped 37 shots. He stopped all even strength shots. Both New York Rangers goals came on the power play. (We’ll rant about that in a moment, too.