Follow me on twitter Follow @stlgoalie The Blues are almost a quarter of the way through the season. Before the season started, any Blues fan would have taken a 13-5-1 start and been happy doing so. The feeling I get among some Blues fans lately is a bit of concern. Frankly, I’m starting to be one of them because I don’t like all the trends I am seeing.
Sure, the trend of getting the defensemen engaged in the offense has been fun but lately the number of odd man rushes against has been increasing, perhaps due to the lack of finish the team is experiencing which leads me to the first concerning trend.
The Blues have been feast or famine in shooting percentage. In their first 8 games, they were feasting, eclipsing the 13% mark 5 times. For reference, the best shooting teams in the league are hovering around 12%. Only 3 of the last 9 games saw them hit the 13% mark. More concerning is that in 7 of their 19 games, they have shot less than 6%. For reference, the Montreal Canadiens are the worst in the league at 6.6%.
As I’ve pointed out before, Jake Allen has always been less consistent in net than a lot of goalies. This season has been no different. Instead of his save percentage being a bell curve, it looks more like an inverted bell curve. In his 15 games, his save percentage has been below 88% in 40% of his games, above 95% in 33% of his games, and in the mid-range in only 27% of his games. How much this says about Allen and how much it says about the Blues team defense is up for interpretation but the underlying numbers suggest it may have more to do with Allen.
When you go to Corsica.hockey’s website and look at the graph of his five game rolling average, it looks like a Great America roller coaster. Delving deeper into this year’s numbers, I looked at Allen as compared to goalies who have logged 400 minutes, looking at goals saved above average, low danger, mid danger and high danger save percentages.
While Allen has been good on high danger shots, he has been relatively poor in all other areas. Allen is 11th of 33 goalies in high danger save percentage. He falls to 19th in overall save percentage, falls to 23rd in goals saved above average (actually being negative, below the average), falls even further to 24th in low danger save percentage and 25th in mid danger save percentage. In most of the categories, he is in the bottom 3rd of goalies who have logged 400 minutes.
Blues fans are likely hoping the team will find a little more positive consistency in these areas as the season progresses.
As I posted earlier, the Blues had some bad news tonight as both Ville Husso and Klim Kostin both left the San Antonio Rampage game with injuries.
It’s a great day for hockey.
Fellow Hockeybuzz bloggers Nashville Predator's Paul McCann, Winnipeg Jet's Peter Tessier and Minnesota Wild's Dan Wallace have generously agreed to a friendly charity wager. We were hoping to do the whole division but don't have it fully represented yet. The blogger whose team finishes the highest the standings at the end of the year gets to pick a charity to whom the others will donate in their name.