from Jose de Jesus Ortiz of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch,

Hitchcock and the Blues were in desperate need of a spark. They needed something different and better. So with their playoff lives in serious peril, the man considered the Blues’ most valuable player of the playoffs sat and watched Allen between the pipes for Game 4 at SAP Center.

Allen wasn’t the only reason the Blues finally showed up offensively and defensively to the Western Conference finals. But there’s no denying Hitchcock got the spark he wanted with a dominant 6-3 victory over the Sharks.

“He gave us exactly what we needed,” Hitchcock said of Allen. “He’s a competitive son of a gun. We needed a battler in there. We needed somebody to really help us play better defense. We played with more passion in front of him in our own zone because I made the goalie change.

“I had to make that decision. I just felt like we were allowing them too much open space with Ells in there, and Ells was getting bombarded. We needed to just dig in a little bit deeper defensively if we were going to have a chance in this series.”

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via Curtis Pashelka of the Mercury News,

Asked about the adjustments the Blues made, DeBoer said, "I'm sure Hitch will tell you he made all kinds of great adjustments and every one of them worked," he said. "Hats off to him."