from Luke DeCock of the News & Observer,

Do you remember?

It’s OK if you don’t.

Ten years is a long time, maybe not geologically, but it’s the distance from fifth grade to drinking age, more than high school and college combined: a lifetime.

It has been so long, the trappings of the playoffs are entirely foreign to an entire generation of Carolina Hurricanes fans, and maybe even some who were around in 2002 or 2006 or 2009, the memories a little hazier than they were in 2011, when the Hurricanes whiffed on their final-game chance to get in, little knowing how much longer they would have to wait.

All of it. The noise. The tailgating. The emotional swings, sometimes in mere seconds. The unabated joy of a Niclas Wallin overtime goal. The little spats and disputes that boil up like thunderstorms on a summer evening – remember when Scott Walker’s punch of Aaron Ward was treated like a Balkan border incursion? – and are (mostly) forgotten by the time the handshake line starts. The soap-opera villains, with Tom Wilson and Brooks Orpik clearing their throats, ready to take their place alongside Scott Stevens and Ryan Smyth and all the others. The geographically impossible rivalries that somehow coalesce, not an issue this time with the Washington Capitals.

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