What makes the playoffs so great?

By Chris Kober  |  Hockeytalk.biz

APRIL 19, 2011 -- Forget Christmas.  Any hockey fan can tell you that this is the most wonderful time of the year, the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Over the next two months we’ll see the best hockey of the year, lots of it, and right here at Hockeytalk.biz we’ll explore just what it is that makes the playoffs so great.

Since the end of June everything in the hockey world has been leading up to this. The Draft, the Free Agent Frenzy of July 1, training camps, winning streaks, losing streaks, coaches being hired and fired, The Winter Classic, the All-Star Game, The Heritage Classic, players have been traded, waived called up and reassigned, all of it leading up to the Grand Opening of the greatest tournament in sports.

Thanks to the salary cap, the shootout and three point games, this year's stretch run was closer than ever. In the Western Conference, four points were the difference between Anaheim getting home ice advantage and Dallas missing the playoffs altogether. For fans of the bubble teams it was an unusually tense time and almost seemed like the playoffs would be more relaxing. That may be true to some extent, there's no need for scoreboard watching, hoping for other teams to loose, there's a sense of relief, accomplishment and pride of being a playoff team, but nothing can compare with the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The first round is sensory overload; it's like watching a Fourth of July fireworks spectacular while gobbling up Thanksgiving dinner and opening Christmas presents all rolled into one. The Conference Quarterfinals come at you fast and furious with three to five intensely meaningful games between battle tested squads every night for two weeks.

There have already been some amazing plays and stories coming out of the playoffs this year. Johan Franzen came back from having his face smashed against the end boards in a game where Pavel Datsyuk showed some inhuman abilities with the puck and Phoenix nearly rallied from a four goal deficit; Buffalo and Philadelphia combined for six goals in a period after a 1-0 Game One; Montreal took a 2-0 series lead on the road over a Boston team that was one of the favorites to come out of the East; Los Angeles dominated San Jose without suspended center Jarret Stoll, reminding the Sharks of past playoff failures while stealing home ice away, and that was just Saturday. Hockey gluttony at its finest.

In the United States it is the only time that multiple hockey games are televised nationally for consecutive days. It’s an uncontained wildfire ripping through drought stricken grasslands. As much grief as Versus and NBC get during the year for their lack of hockey coverage and essentially not being ESPN, the networks (Versus especially) make up for it with expanded coverage of the playoffs.

The sheer volume of games, drama and intrigue also create a focus on the game itself that is almost unheard of in the of twitter age. With the notable exceptions of on ice incidents leading to supplementary discipline and, in recent years, the Phoenix/Winnipeg fiasco, all eyes are on the ice during the playoffs. Contract negotiations, rule changes, league finances, Union politics, and all of the other peripheral hockey talk subjects of the regular season fade into the distance as the play on the ice steps to the forefront.

The players and coaches have a laser-like focus on the goal at hand that seems to rub off on analysts and fans, producing an environment more conducive to the sport of hockey rather than the “business of hockey.” There is far too much on ice action to watch, dissect, analyze and criticize without adding the secondary topics.

That focus leads to the physicality, the intensity, the tradition, the sacrifice, the surprises, the overtimes, the Game Sevens and all of the other aspects that make the playoffs special, but it all gets started with a bang in the first round.