Jake Allen

Jake Allen grew up in Fredericton, New Brunswick, the city he still returns to every summer to train — including, as he described during the NHL's COVID pause, on synthetic ice when a real sheet isn't available. His junior career ran through the QMJHL's Montreal Junior Hockey Club and Drummondville Voltigeurs, where he won the Jacques Plante Trophy with a league-best 2.20 goals-against average and was named Canadian Hockey League Goaltender of the Year in 2010, the same season he backstopped Canada to a silver medal at the World Junior Championship. The St. Louis Blues had already secured his rights, selecting him in the second round of the 2008 NHL Draft, 34th overall.

Allen turned pro in the Blues organization and won the Aldege "Baz" Bastien Memorial Award as the American Hockey League's outstanding goaltender in 2013-14, leading the AHL with 33 wins, a 2.03 goals-against average, and a .928 save percentage for the Chicago Wolves. He went on to spend more than a decade in the St. Louis organization and won the 2019 Stanley Cup with the Blues alongside his boyhood goalie coach, Dave Alexander, a full-circle detail he shared in a feature interview with InGoal Radio. St. Louis traded him to the Montreal Canadiens in September 2020, where he signed a two-year extension that October, and Montreal moved him to the New Jersey Devils at the March 2024 trade deadline. The Devils signed him to a five-year extension on July 1, 2025. Wearing number 34, Allen closed the 2025-26 season with a 17-17-2 record, a 2.74 goals-against average, a .904 save percentage, and one shutout across 37 games. Through 497 career regular-season games, he carries a 2.75 goals-against average and a .907 save percentage, with 225 wins and 29 shutouts.

Allen is also one of the most generous teachers in InGoal Magazine's coverage, measured simply by volume: three InGoal Radio appearances — in 2019, in 2020, and again in October 2024, when he talked through reading plays and changing teams — plus fourteen Pro Reads video sessions, eight recorded as a Blue and six as a Canadien, in which he breaks down his own game on camera, mistakes included. In one early session he admitted he got "stuck" on his post on a play behind the net against Chicago, called the position "terrible," explained the concept he calls "the Jonathan Quick rule" of post play, and recounted advice he received from Martin Brodeur during Brodeur's brief stint in St. Louis.

The thread running through those sessions is patience on his feet. "Trying to stay as patient as I can on my post and on my feet even on in-tight plays changed my game a lot," Allen said while breaking down a sequence against Jonathan Toews. "For me holding my feet and my edges was crucial." He returned to the theme in Montreal, on keeping both the VH and reverse-VH available within a single sequence: "It's all about comfort on the post in all different circumstances and manners and being able to stay on your feet as long as you can and drop in that split second … probably 70 percent of goals are scored within 6 to 8 feet of net."

Allen has been equally specific about reading shooters. He has described how a shooter's hand position tells him whether a shot or pass is coming, why scanning the zone before the puck moves is "crucial" on the penalty kill, and how years of facing Patrick Kane in the Central Division let him anticipate not just shot versus pass but where the shot was headed — including a 3-on-2 he treated as a 3-on-1 because one of the defenders back was a forward. "You should always know the lines and the players and the hands," he said in another session, "and if you don't it puts you behind the eight ball."

The mental framework underneath it all surfaced in a conversation with InGoal in November 2019, when Allen had started just three games behind Jordan Binnington and his early numbers were unflattering. "A big word for me is trust," he said. "There are too many uncontrollable variances in the game of hockey as goalies to focus on results rather than what you know works for you." He finished that shortened season with a career-best .927 save percentage, and credited the turnaround to refusing to chase changes: "I came into this season and said, 'don't change, just don't change a single thing, and keep going with it.'"

Even his equipment has an InGoal story. After playing his entire NHL career to that point in Vaughn, Allen arrived at the 2019-20 season in a deliberately mismatched setup — CCM pads and blocker, a Brian's glove that "feels like I have a baseball glove on again," and a Bauer stick and mask. "I know the goalie gear nerds and all those people are giving me (crap) for wearing mismatched stuff but it's just what feels good," he told InGoal. He is also an outspoken advocate of padded practice gloves at the pro level: "Guys shoot so hard nowadays … I'd really caution all the young guys coming up that are going to have long careers to start to get used to it."