If you love hockey, this is probably your favorite time of the year.
When the puck dropped to begin the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs Wednesday night, the NHL started the crown jewel of its long season. Over the next few weeks, fans will be treated to some of the best hockey they can imagine; a marathon of games packed with ever-increasing postseason intensity as teams, fans and players inch closer to their ultimate goal.
Most of all, however, the playoffs will be packed with some of the finest beards this nation has seen since the administration of President Rutherford B. Hayes.
The playoff beard is a wonderful, mysterious animal. Fine features such as Maxime Talbot's piece of facial foliage during the Penguins' playoff runs has been a joy to behold, while Scott Niedermayer's 2003 salt-and-pepper masterpiece almost made up for the fact that I hate his guts.
Awesome beards are not limited to the pros either. In college hockey, national champion Minnesota-Duluth players sported some exquisite examples of postseason facial hair that only increased in awesomeness considering their other team playoff tradition – bleached blonde hair. Bulldog star Jack Connolly put it all together beautifully, sporting long bleached hockey hair and a massive beard that made him look like a certified crazy person.
No matter the level, playoff beards are the embodiment of hockey's hypermasculinity, a mark of pride that only grows in prestige as a team advances farther in the playoffs and the beard grows to become a legend of its own.
But amid all of the glory and legend that surrounds the playoff beard, I am reminded of my shame. I, an avid hockey fan and lover of the sport's many traditions, am beard-disadvantaged. Folically challenged. Afflicted with Crosbyitis. Whatever you care to call it, one thing is for certain: I am not a beard grower.
We Savidges are not beardsy folk. Should I attempt to sport a playoff beard during the San Jose Sharks' playoff run this postseason, my ""beard"" would basically become a nasty mix of pencil-thin stache, whispy soul patch and curly sideburns. Basically, I would only succeed in looking like the kind of person you don't want to see hanging around a middle school.
To sum it up in the most Bay Area-centric way possible, my beard makes Logan Couture look like Brian Wilson (and what's with BART these days? It's the Pittsburgh-Bay Point Line, not the ""Yellow Line,"" duh!).
As so many fans forsake their razors to enjoy the wonders of playoff hockey in full Grizzly Adams style, my family is left out. Well, it's really just me—the rest of the Savidge clan is lame and doesn't like hockey, and would probably tell me to stop writing whiny, self-indulgent columns about beards and focus on school.
Still, when the postseason comes I can't help but feel like I'm the proverbial Dickensian child, staring in the window at a decadent family meal while he shivers in the cold. Only my shivering is worse because my chin lacks a layer of Scott Hartnell-esque furry insulation.
Our genes have their advantages, of course. I haven't shaved in six days and I still look moderately respectable, which helps considering laziness is one of my defining characteristics. Also, I get to save money by not having to feed or care for the woodland creatures I can only assume take residence in thousands of playoff beards each year.
But for so many of the finest beard traditions —Octobeard, no-shave November, whatever pun or alliteration there is for December— we're left out.
So as you enjoy the glory of playoff hockey this year, spare a thought for the baby-faced. And when the Sharks lift the Stanley Cup when it's all said and done, know that you can all suck it (unless you're a San Jose fan, in which case it's party time, or if you're an Anaheim Ducks fan, in which you can double suck it).
Interested in donating to the Buy Nico A Fake Beard So He Shuts Up Fund? It's a great cause, so e-mail Nico at savidgewilki@dailycardinal.com.
