Blues #1 goaltender race Allen vs. Binnington

[AjaxManifesto]

Both are mediocre right now.

Hopefully they both catch fire as the playoffs get near.

 

[mike1320]

 

[Brian39]

Both are mediocre right now.

Hopefully they both catch fire as the playoffs get near.

Allen's SV% in the month of January is right at league average (.908) and 1/4/20 was his last game where he posted a SV% below the league average. I wouldn't say Allen is mediocre right now. He's not posting elite numbers like he was the first 3 months of the year, but he has been giving the Blues more than mediocre play.

I don't think Binner's .888 since December 1st accurately reflect his play, but it is fair to say he is mediocre right now. I'm not concerned about him either. He has been fighting the puck and is going through a slump in his first full season carrying a starter's workload. That is extremely common and he has battled hard to get results on off nights, which is encouraging.

 

[Zizzle]

Aside from his 2 Colorado games and Calgary where the teams PK didnt help out hes been solid. Every goalie goes through stretches. Allen has gone through his terrible stretches over the last few year where he could hardly buy a win. It the bounce back after a lose.

 

[Pizza!Pizza!]

Numbers are irrelevant. One goalie has proven he can win as a starter and one goalie has proven that he can't.

Jordan "Winnington" Binnington and "Shakey" Jake Allen. The nicknames say it all.

 

[airbus220]

Last season when everyone was angry I wanted to trade for
Jake ALLEN
Are You happy now?

 

[Robb_K]

Although Allen has let in a few bad goals in his last 2 games, he has otherwise been playing pretty well, lately. Binnington has been in a slump recently. But The Blues' goals against during their team's current long slump has been due to very poor team defence, caused mostly by lack of energy or concentration, and will to win. Their last 2 games they have had a lot of energy , and even chippiness in their games (especially last night's). But they played while "sleeping" in The 1st Period of Thursday's game, and that cost them the game. And they had quite a bit of energy in last night's game, but played poor team defence most of the game. They need to get their desire to win, and their concentration to keep them on the task of playing their 200 ft. tight, aggressive in all zones game that carried them from the lower tiers of The West, back up to within 1 game of The Central crown in the regular season, and won them The Stanley Cup, last season.

 

[Stupendous Yappi]

Although Allen has let in a few bad goals in his last 2 games, he has otherwise been playing pretty well, lately. Binnington has been in a slump recently. But The Blues' goals against during their team's current long slump has been due to very poor team defence, caused mostly by lack of energy or concentration, and will to win. Their last 2 games they have had a lot of energy , and even chippiness in their games (especially last nights. But they played while "sleeping" in The 1st Period of Thursday's game, and that cost them the game. And they had quite a bit of energy in last night's game, but played poor team defence most of the game. They need to get their desire to win, and their concentration to keep them on the task of playing their 200 ft. tight, aggressive in all zones game that carried them from the lower tiers of The West, back up to within 1 game of The Central crown in the regular season, and won them The Stanley Cup, last season.

I’ve read lots of negative response to the last couple games, but I just can’t be critical right now. Yes, they need to work to get their game back in order, but should anyone be surprised the team isn’t mentally disciplined when they just watched their well-loved teammate receive CPR and cardioversion on the bench during a game less than a week ago? It takes time to process these things. Attention lapses seem predictable.

They’ll snap out of it. It may cost them playoff seeding position. But I don’t see a shortcut to getting through this.

 

[Robb_K]

I’ve read lots of negative response to the last couple games, but I just can’t be critical right now. Yes, they need to work to get their game back in order, but should anyone be surprised the team isn’t mentally disciplined when they just watched their well-loved teammate receive CPR and cardioversion on the bench during a game less than a week ago? It takes time to process these things. Attention lapses seem predictable.

They’ll snap out of it. It may cost them playoff seeding position. But I don’t see a shortcut to getting through this.

I agree with you that it is natural for them to have a hard time concentrating under the circumstances. I'd be doing the same. I'm not blaming them for it. I just mentioned what they need to do, and that I hope they will start doing that as soon as possible.

 

[Celtic Note]

It’s a natural response for them to be reeling after the unfortunate JBo event, but they were not playing well/winning before that. This current situation just compounds existing problems.

 

[Sgt Schultz]

The Blues will be on NBCSN today (ten minutes or so), and it is one of the rare chances I get to see them here. I mention that so people know my perspective: highlights from various, some more "comprehensive" than others.

What I find nagging about this current streak is the failure of the defense to shut down second and third opportunities, compounded by allowing opponents to be unchallenged in great scoring positions. I could not believe what I saw the other night against Vegas. And I agree with Celtic Note: while this problem was worse in what I saw since JayBo's problem, it is not new. They have to correct those things, which is something they were solid in doing while they were winning.

I haven't had the stomach to look at yesterday's highlights.

So, I find myself sometimes wondering how a puck eluded Binner or Allen, but I find myself wondering a lot more what the heck the defense was doing on scoring plays. It's probably just my limited exposure, but in a lot of cases they look like they are playing the puck near their own net and not a man.

 

[DeuceNine]

Allen has been better than Bennington lately.

JFC why do people still spell his name wrong

This again...

Here is my post from the general discussion thread regarding this topic.



It is not.

Each year there are maybe 1-2 goalies who don't experience the type of slump Binner is in. Those guys are nominated for the Vezina, along with 1-2 guys who had a slump like this (or bigger) but also had runs of insanely hot play. This is being a starter in the NHL. Binner still has a .912, a 60% quality start rate, and a +3.85 GSAA.

Diving into advanced stats, let's filter out goalies with less than 900 minutes played at 5 on 5 to get our sample of the 40 goalies in the NHL with the most TOI. At 5 on 5, he has the 13th lowest expected SV% (which measures the quality of shots faced, not goalie's performance) and has faced the 11th most shots in the league. He is facing a difficult workload. The difference between his actual SV% and expected SV% is 12th. His 5 on 5 GSAA is 12th. He is 6th in high danger SV%, 9th in medium danger SV% and 20th in low danger SV%. You'd like that last number to come up a bit, but the difference between 10th and 20th in that stat is just .32% (98.03% to 97.71%). At the end of the day average to above average goalies are stopping low danger shots at roughly the same rate. We are probably talking about 1 extra low danger goal than the top 10 goalies at this point in the season. As that is the only non-above-average stat, that's not even remotely troubling.

Binner has had a soft few starts, but he is undoubtedly the starter. There is not a competition for the number 1 job here.



Jake has absolutely earned more starts. Binner had a really high workload in the first 3+ months of the season and is currently tied for 5th in starts. Given Allen's play, we should be deploying him like a top tier backup unless/until his play drops off. Halak has 22 starts this year. Khudobin has 17 starts this year. Both of them have outplayed their starter at times this year and both of them will undoubtedly be wearing baseball caps throughout the playoffs barring an injury. They are squarely backup goalies, but they play more games than your run of the mill backup. Allen deserves that role (and at 14 starts this year is on the cusp of it).

Allen has earned an extra game every couple weeks over the remainder of the season and there would be absolutely nothing wrong with giving him 60% or more of the starts over the next couple weeks if he stays hot and Binner doesn't. But that is not a goalie competition. That is riding the hot hand, which most teams do at some point in the year even when they are 100% confident about who plays game 1 of the first round.

Sometimes it's annoying when you choose to litigate every thread, but this warms my heart