After Semyon Varlamov underwent two partial knee replacements, Ilya Sorokin had the same question for him as everybody else. 

“I asked him, ‘What do you think? It’s done?’ ” Sorokin recalled Thursday. The “it” was Varlamov’s career. “He said, ‘No, I will come back.’ First thing he said.” 

Somehow, some way, Varlamov looks on track to resume playing hockey games this season. He took the ice Thursday as the Islanders opened training camp, and if you didn’t know any better, you would have been unable to tell what he’d been through over the 22 months that have elapsed since he last took part in an NHL practice or game. 

Varlamov never had a timeline for his return. As far as he knows, there’s no precedent for what he’s doing. 

Research by The Post turned up one professional athlete to undergo a partial knee replacement and return to competing at an elite level: Olympic skier Lindsey Vonn. As for NHLers or professional athletes in team sports, we could find no comparable examples. 

“The type of surgeries I’ve done, people [are] doing it, but not professional hockey players able to do it and try to come back,” Varlamov said. “That was kinda like a crazy idea. Very risky idea. I took a risk.” 

A risk that might give him his career back. 

“I wasn’t ready to retire,” Varlamov said. “Mentally, I wasn’t there. Definitely, some days it was in my mind when things were not going well. Rehab, we had a lot of setbacks, pushbacks. I was thinking, maybe this is it, I won’t be able to come back. But you wake up the next morning and just tell yourself that you’re not ready to retire. I’m not there yet, I guess. 

“I still have a lot of respect and love for the game. I want to be around this team. This team is looking great with the younger guys now coming in, older guys. So this is very exciting, the whole thing. I pushed myself. I had a lot of motivation also, because the team is looking good. I want to be part of it longer.” 

On a practical, hockey level, the implications for the Islanders are hard to fully unpack. General manager Mathieu Darche acknowledged that keeping three goaltenders on the active roster is a possibility, with Vitek Vanecek under contract, as well as Sorokin and Varlamov. Coach Pete DeBoer said that with an 84-game schedule, the Islanders will want close to 30 games from their backup goaltender, and given the club’s history of overusing Sorokin, they ought to be wary about doing so again. 

The nature of what Varlamov is trying to do makes it impossible to predict how this will go. One thing is obvious from Thursday, though: The Islanders, as an organization, are in a little bit of awe over the fact that he has gotten this far. 

“It’s almost inspiring to our guys,” Darche said. 

“When I got here and I heard about the surgery he had undergone, I was not counting on seeing him at all,” DeBoer said. 

“I wanna say he’s probably the first in history to do it,” JG Pageau told The Post. “That’s pretty cool, and it’s all in his honor to be able to do that.” 

There are still so many steps to go. Varlamov needs to get through camp and the preseason with no setbacks. If he does make it as far as a regular-season game, every period will be a test. 

But he has come so far already. It took until the beginning of March for him to truly feel he would have a chance to play. He upped his skating from three times a week to four or five, successfully pushing to get into a couple of AHL games at the end of Bridgeport’s season — a massive, confidence-boosting step. 

“I feel like if I didn’t play those two games, there’s no chance the team would give me a chance to be part of this training camp,” Varlamov said. 

He did, and now he’s here. If you could ever award the Masterton Trophy on the first day of the NHL’s calendar, this would be the time. 

“I don’t want to jump ahead of things,” Varlamov said. “I’m just taking one day at a time and what’s the best thing I can do to be a better teammate? Just [be] the best version of yourself today. I can only control what’s happening today. I can’t think what’s gonna happen in 2-3 weeks. It’s not in my control. 

“What I’m gonna play, how many games I’m gonna play, maybe I’m not gonna play. Who knows, right? We have a lot of good goalies here. I’m just focusing on today.”