St. Louis Blues: Five Reasons They Win, Five Reasons Minnesota Wins
By Todd Panula
The Snake
If you’d have told me that Jake Allen would be more of a difference than Dubnyk earlier in the season, I’d have taken you to the asylum. Even as an Allen fan, he was struggling mightily this winter.
How the pendulum swings though. Allen has been one of, if not the best goaltender in the NHL since Yeo and Martin Brodeur took their respective positions.
Couple that with the sudden downswing of Dubnyk and you have guys at different stages of their games than when most judgments were made earlier.
Allen was fine to star the year, but plummeted to an .895 save percentage through his first 36 games. Over the last two months, the Snake has been almost unbeatable with a .938 save percentage.
As we pointed out in our end of season awards, those kinds of numbers would normally put you in the running for the Vezina.
Unfortunately, they don’t look at end of season numbers only. Dubnyk will be thanking his lucky stars for that.
His stats through the first half of the year were other worldly with a goals against sub-2.00. He was Jake Allen bad down the stretch though.
Dubnyk went 7-8-2 in the final weeks, had a stretch of games with below .700 save percentages and posted a .883 save percentage after March 7.
As was the case with Allen earlier in the year, you cannot put the entire blame on Dubnyk. That’s the lazy man’s thinking.
Still, he does not enter the playoffs as the dominating force he was earlier in the year. On the flip side, Allen is.
He might not be getting the notoriety across the league he should be, but the Snake is playing well enough to steal some games. That’s what you want from your goaltender at this time of year.