GameThread for Pittsburgh Penguins at St. Louis Blues, Feb 4, 2017

The NHL has decided to stop letting goaltenders wear obnoxiously large pants. That's right, it's a pants deadline, and Allen's one step ahead of the curve, evidently:

Saturday marks the first day goalies were required to wear new, streamlined pants, part of, depending on your point of view, either the NHL's war on goalies or its war on big uniforms.

The pants, which are tighter, rounder and more form-fitting, are supposed to promote offense by keeping goalies from clogging the goal with extra gear.

Blues goalie Jake Allen said he doesn't expect the mandatory date to make much of a difference since he's already been wearing the pants.

"I've been wearing them for two months," he said prior to Saturday's game with Pittsburgh. "We couldn't get any other pants that were regular size, so we just stuck with the streamlined ones. I've been wearing them since probably early December. No one would know from outside. It's tighter around your leg; it's more like a player pant that has another layer of protection."

Allen thinks the pants do make it a little tougher on goalies.

"They're harder, more round," he said. "There's going to be more rebounds. That's what management and the league wanted. They want more goals, they want more rebounds, they want pucks to be able to squeak through you. There's no squareness to them, so they want pucks to be able to squeak through your five-hole and things like that. That's their objective and our objective is not to let it happen." [Post-Dispatch]

Here's your GameThread, and you don't even have to be wearing pants to participate! If you're heading downtown, make sure you pick up a copy of the paper like a good person (and tip the vendors, too).