Poor Jake Allen. One wonders if he can get another win by the end of the season. After being defeated in his last four games, he has not tasted a victory since January 15th.

On Saturday night, the Habs goalkeeper couldn't make the difference against the Capitals, who had won just one of their nine previous meetings, allowing four goals on 34 shots.

However, it would be dishonest to blame him. It's true that he was weak on the first goal and couldn't control Nick Jensen's shot. But for the rest, we cannot say that he received valuable help from his teammates near his semicircle.

Still, it would be a disservice to the 33-year-old masked man to think he would point the finger at them.

“Yes, we have allowed a lot of goals from the slot lately,” he admitted. But if you look at the NHL, most goals are scored between three and five feet from the net. Games are won and lost here.”

Room for improvement

In the case of the Canadian, we assume that the second option prevails.

“With the last two goals we didn’t care about the opponent’s sticks,” analyzed Arber Xhekaj. If you don't, you are allowing opposing attackers to deflect pucks and jump on rebounds.

That's exactly what happened when Sonny Milano scored despite the presence of Brandon Gignac by his side. This was also the case when Jake Evans, concentrating on the disc's trajectory, had no suspicion of Aliaksei Protas.

“It's an important part of the game. “Defenders have to do a better job at this level,” admitted Mike Matheson.

As the two examples above show, it's not just the defenders who need to adapt their game.