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

To be fair, it seemed like a decent gamble to trade away veteran goaltender Brian Elliott so that Allen could become the undisputed starting goaltender.

Nonetheless, there’s no denying that there’s a big difference between sharing the load and being asked to carry most of it. On the ice, the young Blues have shown some great signs at times. There’s no doubt that Vladimir Tarasenko, Alex Pietrangelo, Robby Fabbri and Colton Parayko and Jaden Schwartz give the Blues a good, young core to build on.

Unfortunately for the Blues, they are paying dearly for what is clearly a lack of confidence in the crucial goaltending position. You cannot underestimate the pressure that falls on the entire team when they know the final line of defense is struggling badly.

“I think it’s only natural to have that in your head that you don’t want to let up one shot in the whole game,” Kevin Shattenkirk said. “That’s the easiest way to keep goals out of your net. I think that becomes a dangerous game when we try to be perfect, when we’re trying to make sure that every pass is made the right way out of our zone, every shot is blocked.”

Hitchcock notes that the Blues don’t have the needed balance because too many players are overworking from the red line in and not working enough from the red line back.

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