Well my friends, the Coyotes won't be making a trip this year, but that doesn't stop us from caring about the NHL playoffs. In my opinion, the NHL is unique in that it's the first of the four rounds of playoff hockey that is usually the best, as opposed to the actual championship match-up.
Maybe this owes to the potential upsets, or that its just the natural culmination of going through an 82 game grind - schedule not comparable to anything in the sporting world, by the way.
In the four major sports leagues, each has its' own format, though they are more or less all variations of the same thing. The only difference being the number of rounds and the number of wins it takes to move to the next. Despite this, the NHL has cultivated a special thing with their first round of the playoffs. At least, I think they have anyways - it's hard to know whether this is a feeling that is solipsistic or whether it is a real and shared thing.
Personally, I don't think I am alone here. A quick poll among friends revealed that they kind of enjoy the first round the most too. Me, I love it. Even when I have no one to cheer for, I still get kind of excited, sentimental...rather too much "into it" than I know is probably good for me or healthy. I imagine it's the same feeling certain guys get when they find out there's a new Star Wars coming out or that Pitbull is releasing a new single.
What I like the best is that there is double headers every night.
What I like the second best is - and this may be me just seeing what I want to see - that the games (even game one of a potentially seven game set) all seem to be more intense, harder working, harder checking.......as if everyone on the team suddenly morphed into a third line checking forward from Northern Ontario who makes the league on pure grit and that old indefinable, possibly laughable, quality of "heart."
Now, the old logician in me says this can't be so. Guys who play hockey for a living can't just suddenly find a new level of dedication and carry it on for two months, and that, even if they could, it wouldn't be an elevation to such a level that it would be noticeable on TV.
If you aren't aware, this is the kind of thing educated, smart ass, Canadian's who don't like (or at least don't care about) hockey say all the time, as a way of making fun of grown men with children and money problems who wear the name and number of a millionaire kid ten years younger than them on their back.
I don't know. I see their point, up to a point. But when the playoffs come i don't even care. Maybe this is like the magic you feel at Christmas when you start to understand the logic behind Santa doesn't really add up, but yet you still believe.
To me, starting tomorrow, all these guys are going to go out and play for something other than money. They are going to try harder, hit harder, care more and make me forget about things like child poverty, Crimea, Fukushima, or what they do to the chicken before I eat it's delicious carcass. Which, when you think of it, is the exact reason we watch hockey in the first place. Why we get so mad about it and take it so seriously.
The Playoffs - specifically the first round - are the best part of the NHL.
And - and this is like an extreme exercise in positive thinking - when your team doesn't make it, you can't lose!
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