Thursday Top 4: Why The Stanley Cup Playoffs Are The Best
By GARRETT SEARIGHT
Been a busy week. Filling in on Koza in the Morning means my alarm clock goes off 5 hours earlier than it usually does, and it’s thrown my whole week of out whack.
So this week, I’ll keep it short, sweet, and to the point.
4) It’s the best trophy.
The Stanley Cup is the greatest trophy in sports. End of discussion. And what players go through to earn the chance to hoist that cup helps make it the best trophy in sports.
In the NHL playoffs, nearly every game is a 1-goal game. In nearly all the other sports, the opening round games/series have huge blowouts. But not so often in the NHL. You’ll get one series that goes 5 games, but every other series goes 6 or 7 games and each game is a nail biter.
2) The “team” concept is highlighted.
In hockey, you cannot win with one great player. There’s a reason Alexander Ovechkin has never even made the Conference Finals. You must play as a unit. You have to play as a team, and if you don’t you’re bounced early.
1) Players are at their best.
The biggest knock on the NBA I hear from most people is “they only try during the playoffs”. That’s not the case in the NHL, every night, every player plays the game like Pete Rose played baseball. And it only gets more intense during the postseason. The energy of the game is completely different than a regular season game.
In the NHL, players are at their best in the postseason. It’s almost the exact opposite of baseball. Guys go from hitting .330 in the regular season to hitting .156 in the postseason, and those are the best players. During the regular season in the MLB, there’s routinely 7-3 games. Once the postseason comes around, it seems like every important game is 2-1 or 1-0. Guys tense up and get terrible. During the Stanley Cup playoffs, players rise to the occasion and play their best hockey of the season.