Poor Jake Allen. It makes you wonder if he will be able to achieve another victory by the end of the season. Now defeated in his last four outings, he has not tasted victory since January 15.
Saturday night, against the Capitals who had won only one of their nine previous clashes, the Habs goalkeeper was not able to make the difference, allowing four goals on 34 shots.
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However, it would be dishonest to blame him. It is true that he was weak on the first goal, unable to control Nick Jensen’s shot. But for the rest, we cannot say that he got valuable help from his teammates near his semi-circle.
That said, it would be a poor understanding of the 33-year-old masked man to believe that he would point the finger at them.
“Yes, we have allowed a lot of goals from the slot recently,” he admitted. But if you look across the NHL, the majority of goals are scored between three and five feet from the net. This is where matches are won and lost.”
Room for improvement
In the case of the Canadian, we understand that it is the second option that prevails.
“On the last two goals, we didn’t take care of the opponent’s sticks,” analyzed Arber Xhekaj. When you don’t do that, you allow opposing attackers to deflect pucks and jump on returns.”
This is exactly what happened when Sonny Milano scored despite the presence of Brandon Gignac alongside him. This was also the case when Jake Evans, focused on the trajectory of the disc, was not suspicious of Aliaksei Protas.
“It’s an important part of the match. The defenders, we have to do a better job at this level,” admitted Mike Matheson.
As demonstrated in the two examples cited above, it is not only the backs who must adjust their game.