Massive magnitude
Players lose sleep, don't shave, eat little and don't see their wives much. Yup, it's playoff time.
By TOM JONES
Published April 25, 2006
TAMPA - After games, Lightning defenseman Nolan Pratt likes to decompress with a good book, maybe a magazine. But these days, his eyes can't even make it across a line or two when he realizes he doesn't remember what he just read. His mind is racing off to somewhere else.
"I start thinking about plays," Pratt said.
On game days, Pratt, like most hockey players, enjoys an afternoon nap.
"But I find at this time of year," Pratt said, "I can't sleep much."
This time of year. Playoff time. Nothing like it, players will tell you.
"All you can think about is hockey," Lightning defenseman Darryl Sydor said. "Sometimes you try to get away from it for a bit, but you can't go very long and you start thinking about it again. Everything, I mean everything, is hockey."
They stop reading. They stop sleeping. They stop shaving.
Go deep enough into the playoffs and the players resemble mountain men with mangy beards and stringy hair. They barely see their wives, their kids.
The Lightning, even for home games, holes up in a hotel. They do everything together, including eating all meals.
"When I was in Colorado, the organization sent flowers to the wives and girlfriends," Lightning forward Chris Dingman said. "They wrote on a card, "We appreciate what you're doing, but we need your husbands for a couple of months."'
Players soon start speaking in grunts and groans, shrugs and nods. They don't watch TV. Unless it's a hockey game.
Each morning, they feel like throwing up and each night they barely have the energy to shovel a few bites of food down their throats. They wake up thinking about all the great plays they are going to make that night and they go to sleep tossing and turning over all the bad plays they made.
Ex-NHL player Doug Gilmour once lost 25 pounds playing three rounds of playoffs. That's not unusual. Dark circles emerge around sunken eyes. Cuts and bruises pile up on their faces and bodies. Even good-humored players get testy, often snapping at the slightest thing while wearing permanent scowls.
And the players absolutely love everything about it.
"It is so much fun," Pratt said. "It's a great feeling to have those butterflies in your stomach. To get that feeling, it's the best feeling. It's hard to get that for 82 (regular-season) games. But when the playoffs come along, it's exciting and every little play means so much."
It's the time of year when, Lightning coach John Tortorella says, "Players can make their legacies."
Checkers become scoring stars. Superstars throw checks and block shots. Elite players might even fight, such as when Lightning star Vinny Lecavalier dropped the gloves with Calgary star Jarome Iginla.
"You see great players making great plays, but you'll see other guys chipping in and becoming known as consummate playoff players and that's better than anything," Dingman said. "There's nothing better than that pressure of every play. Get the puck in or get the puck out. If you don't make the play, it could cost your team a game."
And a game could cost the team a series.
"Everything is magnified," Dingman said. "That's the beauty of it. To me, that is fun."
Momentum swings back and forth through a seven-game series. Hatred develops between two teams, even between the fans of the two cities. Players steal pucks. Coaches tell each other to shut their yaps. Each whistle in a game causes a scrum with face-washes from smelly gloves and trash talk from foul mouths.
Then, when it's all over, the two teams line up and shake hands. The winner moves on for another seven-round fight, while the loser goes home, wishing like anything that they were playing.
Heck, even when a team wins it all, it wants more.
"It's the best thing going," Lightning center Brad Richards said. "This is why we play.
"You walk around with that feeling in your stomach all day. And when it's all over, you wish you could do it again right away. I cannot describe how much fun it is."
It's that time of year.