The Blues are a new-look team for next season with the addition of Patrick Maroon, Tyler Bozak, and Ryan O’Reilly. They should have more offensive pop and actual scoring potential on the power play.
On the back-end, they’re basically unchanged save for the addition of Chad Johnson as Jake Allen’s backup. Jake Allen, as he has shown over the past several seasons, requires a quality backup goaltender to bail the team out.
:format(webp)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11709545/Screen_Shot_2018_07_18_at_1.19.17_PM.png)
The Hockey News has Allen pegged as a rebound goaltender for next season for two reasons: he’s better than how he performed last year (he probably is because last season was not a good performance) and the penalty kill wasn’t as good last season as it was the year before:
More than that, though, it’s the fact that his biggest downfall came not at even strength but on the penalty kill.