Blues must treat Qualifiers like playoffs, Allen says

Jake Allen said the St. Louis Blues need to take the round-robin games in the Stanley Cup Qualifiers seriously.

"We need to treat those as important as the [Stanley Cup] Playoffs to get ourselves ready," the goalie told the Blues website Wednesday after skating in Phase 2 of the NHL Return to Play Plan for the first time. "Each team will probably have a different approach, but I think our maturity and our leadership and our experience from last year should definitely prepare us the right way. … This is a unique scenario for all of us, so there's really not too much time to waste."

The Blues, who won their first Stanley Cup championship last season, their 51st in the NHL, are one of 24 teams who will compete for the Cup under the Return to Play Plan. The tournament will begin with the qualifiers, which will include 16 teams playing eight best-of-5 series, and the top four teams in each conference playing a round-robin to determine seeds for the playoffs.

"We have such a great opportunity here to do something again," Allen said. "Pretty much the same group (as last season) and we've had a great season, put ourselves in a great spot. In this situation, it's definitely different, but we're not the only team that is in this position, and I think we have just as good a chance as anyone else."

St. Louis (42-19-10) had the best points percentage in the Western Conference (.662) when the NHL season was paused March 12 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus. The Blues, Colorado Avalanche (42-20-8, .657), Vegas Golden Knights (39-24-8, .606) and Dallas Stars (37-24-8, .594) will play each other once to determine the order of the top four seeds for the Western Conference First Round.

"Now that we all went through [winning the Stanley Cup] last year, we got to experience it firsthand, it makes it that much more enticing for us," Allen said. "I think last year sort of gave us a taste of it and that's why we sort of came out strong this year (12-3-3), we've had a great season up until this point, and now we just want to try and carry over that momentum we had this past year into the tournament/playoffs."

The opening of training camps in the teams' local markets, which is the start of Phase 3, is scheduled for Monday, provided health and safety conditions allow. Teams will then travel July 26 to one of two hub cities, where they will begin Phase 4, the resumption of play, with the qualifiers starting Aug. 1. The hub cities -- one for the 12 participating Western teams, one for the 12 Eastern teams -- have not been announced.

"We knew this was [a] short training camp," Allen said. "You're jumping right into it and games are right away."

Allen, who made the 25-hour drive from Fredericton, New Brunswick, to St. Louis last week, said he wasn't able to skate at a rink at home but found other ways to stay in game shape.

"Me and [Blues goalie Jordan Binnington] have been doing some vision online work," he said. "I try to keep the eyes focused as best as possible. I have a little baseball machine, it's actually used for hitters in baseball ... where balls come out at different speeds, different curves, change-ups, curveballs, things like that. You try to catch them obviously, so you use your glove and blockers."

Allen was 12-6-3 in 24 games (21 starts) this season. Among goalies to play at least 20 games, he was second in the NHL with a 2.15 goals-against average and fourth with a .927 save percentage.

"It's been a good few days now," Allen said. "Getting a lot of specific goalie work in and just sort of getting the feet back. ... To get some real action again has been fun. We're looking forward to next week when we really can actually get together as a group and participate in training camp."