St. Louis Blues Fans Jump Off Jake Allen’s Bandwagon

The St. Louis Blues have an issue in net. News flash – water is wet. It’s the same old fan driven hysteria that will never be solved, even if this team ever wins a Cup.

The St. Louis Blues have had issues between their fans and the goaltenders for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time to see if the man on the street was arguing with his friend over whether Glenn Hall or Jacques Plante should play.

That would surely not shock me. More than any quarterback controversy in history, Blues fans love to pick on the goaltender. Whoever is in net is the worst thing ever and the other one should be playing.

Thus, the circle of hysteria now continues after Jake Allen laid an egg in the team’s final home game.

There used to be a saying from the Muppets where Kermit the Frog would sing it’s not easy being green. They might as well change that to it’s not easy being an Allen fan.

The level of ridiculous comments just go off the charts. The entire situation is ridiculous because it forces fans on either side to argue points only to support their player. For example, I’ve never been against Brian Elliott or Carter Hutton other than believing they were glorified backups. However, the hate and negativity spewed at Allen forces you to find negative things about the other guys and that’s not really an argument worth having.

What bugs me now is how quickly fans forget, or choose to ignore, the fact that Allen was a key part of the team’s recent winning streak.

The Snake was to blame for the loss against Chicago. There were defensive miscues and too much standing around waiting for the offense of Chicago to come at them, but the goals cannot be described as anything but soft.

But the haters just take that and run with it. The oversimplification is sickening. Allen is suddenly what is wrong with this team and perhaps the only thing. Ignore the fact that he has consistently bailed the team out, in addition to his inconsistency.

Look at the winning streak just recently. People forget that Allen was blistered with 40 shots in the Los Angeles win because the Blues managed so many goals. Additionally, Allen was stellar in net in the San Jose loss but got no goal support. He was ok in the Anaheim win, stopping 20 of 22.

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Allen did have a semi-clunker against Colorado in the loss and was not special in the win over the Rangers – that can’t be denied. Despite the lack of shots, Allen was a big reason the Blues beat Boston though as the B’s still had quality opportunities. He stopped 21 of 22 and had a .955 save percentage.

Allen’s last four games before this losing streak had numbers of .955, .950, .971 and .917. He was decent in Vegas, but not good enough to bail the team out. Then his stats look bad against Arizona, but Allen only gave up two goals. He was only removed because of a coaching decision.

Allen was given no help against Washington. The team had their worst second period of the season – that’s saying something – and Allen had little chance.

Then the Chicago game had the bottom fall out. Allen returned to his mistakes that got him in trouble in the middle of the year.

Again, that’s part of the problem with the fans though. Most Allen supporters are more than willing to acknowledge that he has been poor for stretches this season and picked a bad time to revert to that against Chicago.

But we don’t forget how well he has played either. It’s become fashionable on talk radio to call him mediocre at the start of the year when he actually had good numbers and the defense was not supporting him. Thankfully the scorers were doing their jobs back then.

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Allen has been inconsistent this season, there is no doubt of that. It is just tiring to see one bad game throw away weeks worth of good performances though.

Nobody said sports was fair, but come on. Let’s stop picking the facts that support the narrative. If you don’t like Allen, that’s your choice. We can’t pretend he has not been part of why the team has won if we are going to so easily assign blame to him when they’ve lost.