Let The Games Begin: The Race For Lord Stanley's Cup Is On

Playoffs. 

It’s almost a magic word.  After months of hard work, dedication, emotion and strain you have come out of the regular season ready to start the process all over again.  And if you are lucky, your team has made it too.

For the National Hockey League, the post-season is a chance to make a run at the most storied trophy in all of sport.  After seven or so grueling months you somehow find another gear.  You ramp up your intensity.  You get to that crazy place that makes your friends wonder if maybe you are after all a little … off.  In the quest for Lord Stanley players will drop their bodies in front of a Zdeno Chara slap shot, play on a broken foot, pull a groin, and still suit up every night because it is what hockey players do.  The fans will wear their team colors to work, get in loud shouting matches with total strangers in the middle of the street, and watch games that go three overtimes on the West Coast on a Tuesday night because that is what hockey fans do. 

There are plenty of questions about the post-season: Can the playoffs inspire Phoenix to care about hockey in the desert?  Is the East going to get another Crosby versus Ovechkin matchup? Can the Sharks make it out of Round 1? Does having Hossa mean the Blackhawks are doomed? Can Brian Boucher counter the brick wall that is Brodeur?  Will discipline, if needed, be consistent?  Questions which will all be answered as the weeks go by, but as CBC puts together a few mind blowing pre-game montages and Barry Melrose preps his post-season mullet there is nothing but a feeling of anticipation. 

There is a reason they say, “The Cup changes everything”.  The Cup is possibility.  The Cup is perseverance.  The Cup is sacrifice.  The Cup is what makes it all worth something.  For the next few weeks fans can revel in the energy and anxiety that is hockey at its finest and most intense.  Let the story lines begin.