Jake Allen, David Backes out rest of regular season with injuries

The St. Louis Blues still can’t shake the injury bug.

On Monday the team announced they will finish the regular season without two important pieces. Captain David Backes and goaltender Jake Allen both will miss the last three games with lower body injuries. The team said both players will be reevaluated before the start of the playoffs.

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The Blues are currently two points behind the Dallas Stars in the fight for first place in the Central Division. St. Louis has one game in hand on the Stars.

Allen exited the Blues’ Sunday game against the Colorado Avalanche after the first period. He missed 17 games between Jan. 8 and Feb. 20 with a knee injury. It’s currently unclear if this is related to that problem.

Backes had played in all 79 games for the Blues this season and scored 21 goals. In the game against the Avalanche, the forward played 16:54, scored a goal, added an assist and won 63.6 percent of his faceoffs. 

Allen’s injury could put an end to any sort of goaltending drama heading into the playoffs for St. Louis. He leads the team with 47 games played, but Brian Elliott has had arguably a better year at 21-7-6 with a 2.03 goal-against average and .931 save percentage. Allen holds a 2.35 goal-against average and .920 save percentage. 

Last season coach Ken Hitchcock chose Allen right before the start of the playoffs and the Blues lost in six games to the Minnesota Wild in the first-round.

Wrote Sportsnet about the two goaltenders:

Both goalies are good bets to be positive contributors, but Elliott has been incredible, especially lately. Sometimes riding the hot hand can be a bad decision with goaltenders, but there’s enough data here to suggest that right now, Elliott is the superior bet going into the playoffs.

As of April 2, the Blues ranked 13th in the NHL with 277 man-games lost to injuries according to the website Man Games Lost. The site points out that the Blues have seen injuries to “multiple, high CFrel% players” meaning puck possession drivers. These have included defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, forward Jaden Schwartz, forward Alex Steen, forward Paul Stastny and forward Patrik Berglund amongst others.

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Josh Cooper is an editor for Puck Daddy on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @joshuacooper