Jake Allen Snake Bitten With Injury Prior To Training Camp

Things just don’t seem to work out in Jake Allen’s favor these days. The St. Louis Blues goaltender was given another vote of confidence and then came up with an injury.

Whether you’re in the camp of St. Louis Blues fans that hate Jake Allen or those that like him, your patience is definitely being tested. The Snake has been bitten by the injury bug just as camp is about to start on the 2018-19 season.

Allen has come up snake-eyes the last two seasons with some bad form during the winter months. Even those of us that are fully on his side are shaking our heads and hoping this will be the bad part that seems to be part of his season every year lately.

In truth, it has only really been the last two seasons where Allen has had a really bad run of things. In the years prior, fans latched onto single bad performances since they were already biased and his sample sizes were smaller.

The weird thing with Allen is his numbers don’t fully back up either side of the argument. If you support him, you can point out that he’s one of the Blues best, statistically, or that he’s on pace with goalies from other teams that have won Stanley Cups. If you’re against him, there are numbers that back up that point of view as well.

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Yet, here we are in another situation that will only add fuel to the fire of those squarely against the Snake. They will say the Blues made a mistake letting Carter Hutton go since he had proven he could carry the load for longer stretches. Interestingly enough, people quickly forget that nobody thought Hutton would be able to fill the shoes of Brian Elliott and that worked out.

This does pose a problem for Allen since back spasms are nothing to take lightly. As someone who has had their own back issues, they can really take a mental toll. Just as soon as things seem right, one wrong move can put you back on the shelf.

The organization and its fans have to hope that this is a minor issue, as it seems to be, and Allen will be good to go by the start of the season. The only main question will be his sharpness and shape, since there has not been indication whether he will be able to keep skating or not.

Looking at the bright side, if there is one, this presents an opportunity to Ville Husso. Husso goes into training camp as the third goaltender on the depth chart (assuming he has pushed ahead of Jordan Binnington). So, now he will see a lot more game time in the preseason than he might have otherwise.

This lets the Blues know how much he has progressed. It also lets him get more familiar with his potential NHL teammates and get used to something closer to NHL competition.

In theory, this could be bad news for Chad Johnson. If Husso plays really well, the Blues could just go with a combination of Allen and Husso. That is unlikely, as it seems like the Blues are comfortable using Husso for insurance instead of as an actual backup, but time will tell there.

The goaltending battle, if you can even call it that, did add a little spice with this injury. However, we all know that Allen is still going to be the starter when healthy, so we have to hope that is sooner rather than later given all the hope surrounding the rest of the roster.