The Stanley Cup playoffs are the best postseason in sports.
Take the coolest trophy in sports and hold it up for grabs in a tournament where half the league competes in emotionally charged, seven-game series after series, throw in Barry Melrose's totally wicked mullet, and tweak the intensity up to 11. What more could you ask for?
Beards.
That's right, beards. Whether you're a hockey player or just a hardcore fan, you must grow some facial hair to intimidate the competition and prove that you're more of a man than the next hoser.
And nothing -- I mean nothing -- is manlier than a beard. Imagine a man with a beard fighting a bear. Manly. Imagine a clean-shaven guy fighting the same bear. Less manly. Now imagine a man with a beard fighting a clean-shaven bear. Weird.
I once met an uncle of a friend of mine who actually fought a bear at a state fair somewhere in -- you guessed it -- the South. And he had one heck of a beard. Manly.
But in Tempe, a man can come up with few good excuses to grow a beard. You don't need it to keep warm in the winter. They're not particularly in style. And you're certainly not fighting a bear.
Therein lies the importance of the Stanley Cup playoffs. It's one time a year when a man can be a man, unless that man is a Coyotes fan.
As much as I pull for the Desert Dogs, I'll always be, first and foremost a St. Louis Blues fan. And their 26-year streak of making the playoffs means they haven't missed a postseason in my lifetime. That means I should have been growing playoff beards since I was 3 months old.
But when you're a man being all manly, you inevitably run into one problem. Women.
See, girls can't have beards. Most of them don't understand that when Ray Borque won the Cup with Colorado in 2001, his goatee was the key to his power. Years of experience and fine-tuned talent helped, but Borque couldn't have hammered in all those slap shots without that gruff, salt-and-pepper goatee.
Most girls didn't see the clips of him bringing the Cup to Boston, where the clean-shaven Borque looked about as intimidating as a Sharpei. For those of you unfamiliar with the Sharpei, it's a breed of hairless-looking dog characterized by the fact that it looks like a wrinkly penis. Not manly.
In this year's playoffs, the Blues are down 0-2 to the San Jose Sharks due, in large part, to bad penalties and shady officiating. My girlfriend -- who is required by our written pre-dating agreement to root for the Blues and, in exchange, gets to think Chris Pronger is hot -- came to my house after Saturday's game and asked, "Did the Blues lose?"
Apparently, she would prefer not to get a mouthful of goatee every time she kisses me. This has turned her against the Blues, which is not acceptable. So I'm writing this column to break it down for all the ladies.
If your dude is growing a playoff beard, continuing to grow it is the only way his team will win the Stanley Cup. But your dude needs you to support the team, too.
So, please, let us grow our playoff beards. You undoubtedly see us at our least manly, and you probably don't want us to fight a bear, so give us this one time of year to be manly hockey fans, and we'll shave as soon as our team is out of the playoffs.
Tim Agne's goatee is a sign of his desperate clinging to a feeble hope that the Blues will win the Cup this year. Reach him at tim.agne@asu.edu.
