from John Buccigross of ESPN,

From a whisper to a scream.

The NHL regular season is over and what you will witness during the Stanley Cup playoffs over the next two months is total physical and emotional investment. It's not a series of games. That actually trivializes it. It's a cause. That sounds theatrical and stagy. It is not. It is fact. These players are playing for something that lasts a lifetime.

In hockey, one is taught to be unrelenting, to sacrifice, not to whine, and to play hurt. The playoffs are the embodiment of hockey at its pulsating core. Players are playing for the honor of the game and the values it teaches, things they've been taught since Learn to Skate lessons when they were 5. Everything they are on the inside comes out for all the world to see.

It's difficult to play like this, to live like this, over long stretches of time and at an extremely high level. One can live that way at a simmer. But playoff hockey is not played at a simmer. It's played at a boil. And to keep up, you have to be all in.

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