Blues Goaltending

[Blues54569]

The blues can’t get rid of Jake Allen soon enough. I wish they would cut him tonight and take their chances with Carter or anyone else. Tonight’s loss is on him, hands down. I don’t think he could have stopped a bowling ball. He is either on a win streak playing like an all-star for a few games, or flipping the switch and playing at a high school level. Zero consistency; the blues will never win anything of substance with him in the net. Wouldn’t break my heart if Yeo followed him out the door, since he can’t figure out that Allen is not the guy.

[theohall]

And the Blues also aren't going anwhere as long as Mike Yeo is the head coach of this team and does absolutely nothing about the godawful power play.

[ComradeT]

Honestly I don't think goaltending is our problem (last night's game notwithstanding). I'll repeat what others, including Theo, said: the below average offense relying solely on three guys producing, god awful powerplay, and lack of team effort are main culprits. Team goal against for the Blues are 7th best in the league and that's playing without three of their main defensemen for some time this season.

[glen a richter]

If they hadn't gotten off to that stellar start of the season, we would have abandoned the playoff discussion a long time ago. 30th ranked power play and playoff seed don't belong in the same sentence. I'm not blaming the players, Yeo doesn't deserve to be in the playoffs, and he doesn't deserve to be behind the bench.

[theohall]

I know how to solve the lazy stretch pass reliant offense...

Practice as if the two-line pass is illegal. It would force tighter 5 man groups that would actually have to skate. It wouldn't surprise me if Vegas already does this.

[evil roy]

I've tried to avoid the Jake Allen debate all season but hearing the lame defenses of his truly awful play from my friends has finally pushed me over the edge. This season Allen's stats are (min 10 GP):
GAA 2.74 NHL rank 30th
Sv% .906 Rank 50th

In a very simplistic sense these numbers tell me that Allen is the NHL's second worst starter goals against-wise as well as being inferior to 20 NHL backups save percentage-wise.

IMO, bad goaltending has a much more profound effect on offensive output than poor offense has on goaltending. The offense tends to be less creative and take fewer chances when they're afraid their goalie doesn't have their back. But I don't believe that a goalie's stats (apart from W/L) are very dependant on scoring. IOW, you can conceivably lay some of the blame for the Blues scoring woes at Allen's feet; its less believable that Allen would be (alot) better if the Blues' scoring increased.

So yes, scoring is of course an issue, but so is goaltending and in a big way. And fixing the goaltending issue addresses the pisspoor offense to a degree that I do not think the reverse would.

And just for grins here are Hutton's #s:
GAA 2.07 rank 3rd
Sv%. 930 rank 1st

Which means that every 10 games, Allen allows 7 more goals than Hutton does. So those saying that offense is the main problem need to understand that to make up for Aliens play you'd need to sign a 40+ goal scorer

I'd like to be wrong about this but numbers don't lie.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

[theohall]

Yet the Blues are 6th in the NHL in GA with Allen starting more than 2/3rd of the games played. How did they get there with Allen being so awful all the time?

Yes, Allen has had bad games. Not denying that.

However, when there is a stretch of something like 15 games that Allen started (don't remember exact number) and the Blues only score 6 goals in those starts - there is a clear problem with the offense.

When I mention the "elephant in the room" it's referring to what isn't being discussed even though it's a blatant problem. Everyone talks about Allen. Who brings up the putrid offense?

How many games have the Blues lost this season when scoring 3 or more goals?

3+ GF 43 GP - 36-5-3
2 or less GF 38 GP - 8-27-3

This is an offensive era. If you aren't scoring 3 or more goals, your team isn't winning most nights, regardless of what your goaltender does. If you look around at team stats around the league, that generalization holds true - 2 GF = losing most nights.

Yes, Hutton has done better with limited goal support: 6-4, but what would happen if he were to play 27 games without goals support. Odds are those numbers get worse, not better.

It still doesn't excuse the putrid offense, which is still 24th in the league.

[cprice12]

Yet the Blues are 6th in the NHL in GA with Allen starting more than 2/3rd of the games played. How did they get there with Allen being so awful all the time?

Yes, Allen has had bad games. Not denying that.

However, when there is a stretch of something like 15 games that Allen started (don't remember exact number) and the Blues only score 6 goals in those starts - there is a clear problem with the offense.

When I mention the "elephant in the room" it's referring to what isn't being discussed even though it's a blatant problem. Everyone talks about Allen. Who brings up the putrid offense?

How many games have the Blues lost this season when scoring 3 or more goals?

3+ GF 43 GP - 36-5-3
2 or less GF 38 GP - 8-27-3

This is an offensive era. If you aren't scoring 3 or more goals, your team isn't winning most nights, regardless of what your goaltender does. If you look around at team stats around the league, that generalization holds true - 2 GF = losing most nights.

Yes, Hutton has done better with limited goal support: 6-4, but what would happen if he were to play 27 games without goals support. Odds are those numbers get worse, not better.

It still doesn't excuse the putrid offense, which is still 24th in the league.

As was pointed out above, poor goaltending can and often does have an effect on goal production. I know when you're allowing soft goals, it can really deflate the team. And when it happens often, a team can lose confidence in their goalie. There is a reason why the Blues scored more goals when Hutton was in net and it wasn't because Hutton faced inferior opponents when compared to Allen (he didn't). Now, the players are paid good money and they shouldn't let that kind of thing effect them...but it does happen unfortunately. Hockey is a game that swings back and forth from play to play and players ride waves of momentum. Allowing bad goals sucks the life out of the home arena as well as the team itself and it can be hard to get that momentum back.

What bothers me, is when poor goaltending is blamed (and let me say that I hate it when the default "go to" for who cost us a game is the goalie. It's a lazy man's way to analyze a game...but this season, our #1 goaler was indeed a huge problem), those who tend to defend Allen instantly point to the lack of goals being scored as the problem and don't want to criticize the goalie at all. When in reality, both were a problem. One may have caused the other, but whatever...in the end they were both a problem.

Also, it needs to be pointed out that we scored more goals this year than we did two years ago when we went to the conference finals. The difference? We had very good goaltending that year. Unless your offense is near the top of the league, you just aren't going to win a lot with sub par goaltending. Hutton doesn't factor into the "sub-par goalie" equation because he was fantastic this season. Allen is the one who had the issues (understatement) regardless of the number of goals scored by the Blues when he was in net. The Blues lack of goals scored does not excuse the poor goaltending by Allen this year. And vice versa can be said as well.

People like to look at one game here or one game there as a reason why we missed out on the playoffs. But you really need to look at the body of work from two areas of this team... goaltending (Jake Allen) & our power play. Those two things over the course of the season sunk this team. If either one is just AVERAGE this year, we make the playoffs with ease...and we wouldn't have been a wild card either.

Mike Yeo can be tossed in as well...as he is responsible for starting Allen so much, AND, the failure that was the power play. Not to mention questionable lineups and poor matchups at critical times of games.
Armstrong too, since he is the one dishing out the bad contracts and essentially forcing those players into the lineup playing up a line or two when they shouldn't be there (Allen, Sobotka, Bouwmeester, Berglund, etc).

Losing Fabbri hurt. Losing Schwartz for a while hurt. Steen & Tarasenko going dormant for long stretches during the season hurt. Berglund not coming alive until the final weeks hurt (but hey, it's Berglund...that's what he does).

And this rambled on way too long...

[gaijin]

The poor goaltending/lack of scoring debate can be a bit of a chicken-or-egg situation. A goalie can mitigate a poor offense with good saves. A good offense can make up for substandard goaltending. But I think you have to conclude the bigger share of responsibility to not start that cycle falls on the goaltender. Regardless of whether the offense is dried up or scoring in waves, it's on the goaltender to not implode and give up buckets of bad goals.

All offenses have high points and low points every season, as do goaltenders. Every goalie, even Vezina winners, gets pulled a few times every year. Allen, unfortunately, had a hit a pretty bad trough last year, and an even worse one this year. A team that fancies itself as competitive can't afford that much fluctuation, and I am starting to lose faith that Allen is capable of staying solid for an entire season.

[glen a richter]

The poor goaltending/lack of scoring debate can be a bit of a chicken-or-egg situation. A goalie can mitigate a poor offense with good saves. A good offense can make up for substandard goaltending. But I think you have to conclude the bigger share of responsibility to not start that cycle falls on the goaltender. Regardless of whether the offense is dried up or scoring in waves, it's on the goaltender to not implode and give up buckets of bad goals.

All offenses have high points and low points every season, as do goaltenders. Every goalie, even Vezina winners, gets pulled a few times every year. Allen, unfortunately, had a hit a pretty bad trough last year, and an even worse one this year. A team that fancies itself as competitive can't afford that much fluctuation, and I am starting to lose faith that Allen is capable of staying solid for an entire season.

That Allen has earned the moniker "January Jake" is troublesome. Should there be a different goalie who plays from the New Year to February 1st to alleviate the inevitable winter swoon that blows the season apart? This team has more holes than a wiffle ball, but since they don't all manifest themselves at the same time and the team usually makes the playoffs, we generally overlook the big picture. This year they all happened concurrently and we end up eulogizing the season before the playoffs have even started. The goaltending was atrocious, the defense was mediocre, the power play was horrible, the offense (in general) was poor to middling, the coaching was an F- for failure to ever make changes, the depth was misused, the kids were misused, the only real bright spot this season was Hutton and that's a bad thing because he's going to command a huge raise so he probably won't be back with the club next season anyway.

[theohall]

That Allen has earned the moniker "January Jake" is troublesome.

Well - following that logic based on 2 seasons of the same thing happening, shouldn't the Blues be called the "Bulletless Blues of Winter"? Back-to-back seasons offense disappeared from this team starting in December and ending sometime in February.

Those were both long stretches for a team not to be performing offensively. It's even worse when the league changed the rules to open up the offense and the Blues wound up 24th in scoring. One of only 10 teams to have a decrease in GF from 16-17 to 17-18. I understand that a team can have times when scoring is down, but it should never last 2 months or longer in back-to-back seasons. That's what coaches are supposed to correct. It is any coincidence Yeo has been here for both of those seasons? I don't think so.

Back to the chicken-egg point: It's the same 2 questions: Is it the offense drying up and Allen trying to do too much to overcome it? Or is it Allen and the team not performing in front of him, because he is in net?

If the offense doesn't dry up for 2+ months and Allen plays poorly in December/January in that situation - we have our answer.

While folks keep pointing to Allen having a bad season - he wasn't the only goalie whose numbers were worse than the prior season - some very good ones did also - Braden Holtby to name one. IMO, those rules changes impacted some goalies more than others. But that's a different discussion.

[theohall]

Also, it needs to be pointed out that we scored more goals this year than we did two years ago when we went to the conference finals.

Take a wild stab how many teams scored more goals in 17-18 than they did in 15-16? All but 8 of them. The Blues only scored 2 more goals which put them 9th worst in terms of GF differential from 15-16 to 17-18. Detroit, Florida, Vancouver, Carolina, Edmonton, and the Islanders didn't make the playoffs, but all had a greater increase in scoring than the Blues comparing those two seasons. All of the teams which made the playoffs had a greater increase in scoring.

Rules changes had a bigger impact on the rest of the league while Yeo is treading along with his status quo offensive output for his career as a head coach, in spite of the rules changes.