POINT – NHL Playoffs bring excitement, suspense

Playoff hockey is nothing but excitement.

The superficial reason is, of course, that the… Playoff hockey is nothing but excitement.

The superficial reason is, of course, that the teams are better. They’re that way in any sport.

But the biggest thing that sets the NHL postseason apart from every other sport is overtime. In the NBA, it doesn’t matter if somebody scores on you in the extra frame. You get the ball, inbound it and saunter slowly up the floor in your boring, NBA way. You always get a chance to answer your opponent’s basket. Extra innings are the same in baseball — both teams get a chance to score.

In football, overtime is sudden death, but let’s face it — whoever wins the coin toss should win the game. “Sudden death” is the NFL’s euphemism for “worst playoff system in professional sports.”

In hockey, though, you don’t get the chance to answer and you don’t get a coin flip. You have no choice but to be perfect. One fluke play, one breakdown, one miscommunication can make the difference. When that lamp goes on, it’s all over. Hockey playoffs make your face turn the color of the blue line, because every minute could mean the difference between moving closer to Lord Stanley’s Cup or a long summer.

There’s no shot clock in hockey. If your team gets into the scoring zone, it can move the puck around, indefinitely trying to set up a shot. You grip the arms of your chair tighter with every pass. Every time somebody centers the puck your eyes get wide, because you never know if that will be the one time somebody muscles his way to it and stuffs it in. Every time somebody launches a one-timer, you sit right up to the edge of your seat, as if your getting tense will help your goalie be just as alert.

Playoff hockey also has another thing going for it, one that makes things even more nail-biting: the announcers.

Growing up listening to the Flyers’ announcers is enough to give a kid a heart attack at age 7. That’s not an insult — they’re great, and they suck you into the game. Listening to, “Renberg now with the puck centers to LINDROS FOR THE SHOT OOOOOH it goes wide and New Jersey plays it out” without a break for a breath or punctuation had me thinking the team would score every trip down the ice. By the time each sequence is over, you feel like you dropped from the top of a roller coaster to the bottom.

Most hockey announcers are the same way. Put that in the playoffs, and we’re talking about the stress level of an air traffic controller. You see an exciting play, you hear the announcers get fired up and suddenly you find that the aluminum soda can you’ve been holding is crumpled.

You just don’t get that in the NBA. There’s a lot of standing still and slow movement in any NBA game. A lot of one man with the ball (ahemKobeahem) plotting, waiting, plotting then making a move and taking another shot. You get a lot more time to analyze the last crazy dunk that somebody throws down over somebody and is still only worth two points.

The playoffs don’t offer anything terribly different, unless it’s more predictability. Upsets rarely happen. Sure, any of the teams fighting for the bottom four spots in the East could knock off the Pistons in the regular season, but would they beat them in the playoffs? Take four of seven games? Not likely. The Bulls are hot right now, but taking a series from the top dogs is a tough mission.

The NHL can also make for great stories from its masked men. A goalie that gets hot at just the right time can single-handedly take his team from low playoff seed to potential conference champion. Take three years ago, when Jean-Sebastien Giguere and Manny Fernandez decided to go absurdly crazy. You didn’t have to be a fan of either team to root for these underdogs, guys who made you wonder how a brick wall could dive and flip like that.

I’ll admit that there’s definitely a question mark for this year’s playoffs in terms of how coverage will work out. I’ll miss not having it on ESPN. I loved Gary Thorne, and without him, things will definitely have a different flavor.

But the hockey will still be there at the heart of things.

And wherever you find playoff hockey, you’ll find me.

Brian Weaver is the assistant sports editor for The Pitt News. E-mail him at bweaves_pittnews@hotmail.com.