As I mentioned in my previous post on May 22, I have a new book coming out in the fall. It’s called The Mammoth Book of Hockey Trivia. (Feel free to pre-order a copy now.) I didn’t receive a lot of direction for the book, but my key takeaway was “give us lots!” And I did. So much so that about 50 pages had to be cut in order to get it to the printer on time. (It’s still pretty “Mammoth” at just under 500 pages.) I figured some of the text that got cut might prove useful for future posts, and as I was watching Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Final on Tuesday, I thought the cut segment on playoff beards would work well now…

The tradition of players growing their facial hair during the playoffs is said to have started with the New York Islanders’ Stanley Cup dynasty of the 1980s. Wikipedia posits a theory put forward by hockey author and historian Andrew Podnieks that because the Islanders of that era featured Swedish players Stefan Persson and Anders Kallur, the playoff beard may have been inspired by tennis sensation Bjorn Borg of Sweden who let his beard grow during Wimbledon when he won five-straight championships from 1976 through 1980. Wikipedia also references an article by Ryan Kennedy in The Hockey News from 2006 in which Mike Bossy thought it was Butch Goring who started the trend.

An article by Ian Walker of Postmedia News, appearing in several newspapers in April of 2011, tried to determine the origin of the playoff beard. In it, Butch Goring deflects any credit for inspiring the tradition during his time with the Islanders. “It was well on its way by the time I came on board in 1980,” Goring says, “but I don’t think any of us gave a second thought about whether it would become such a big rallying point for everybody like it is today.”

Islanders captain Denis Potvin agreed. “I don’t know if we can take full credit,” says Potvin, “and I wish I had a great story for you, but it was just one of those things. Back then, we’d play four games in five nights in the opening round and it was just something that kind of happened. It certainly wasn’t choreographed or planned. I really don’t recall a moment where everyone said ‘Ah-ha, we’re going to go ahead and do this.”

Rob Rossi of The Athletic had a story about playoff beards on June 17, 2025. In it, Denis Potvin said, “We were too tired to shave. Then we just didn’t. That’s part of it, you know? To win the Stanley Cup is a miserable two months. The beard is a reminder of how much you have to put into it.”

Ken Morrow was a bearded member of the first Islanders championship team in 1980, but he’d brought his beard with him when he entered the NHL in February after winning a gold medal with the “Miracle on Ice” U.S. Olympic team. “The first person I remember putting us with the beards was Stan Fischler,” Morrow told Rossi. Fischler, the longtime NHL writer and broadcaster (and New York-area teams historian), wrote a story about the Islanders and their beards “at some point during our run,” said Morrow. Morrow added that though he couldn’t point to a specific teammate who led the playoff beard charge in 1980, he remembers everybody being on board entering the 1981 playoffs. “Don’t mess with what’s working.”

Wikipedia credits the phrase “playoff beard” to an unusual source, saying the birth of the term relates to the Detroit Red Wings during the regular season of 1984–85, when players on the team agreed not to shave until they won four games in a row. An article in the Detroit Free Press by Bernie Czarniecki on February 3, 1985, credits the idea to Ivan Boldirev and Danny Gare and says Brad Park called his new facial hair his “playoff beard.” But the term is actually older than that.


On April 26, 1983, the News of Paterson, New Jersey, refers to John Tonelli of the Islanders and his “lucky playoff beard.” Two years earlier, the Minneapolis Tribune on May 11, 1981, on the eve of the North Stars facing the Islanders in the Stanley Cup Final, has a photo of a shaggy Kevin Maxwell of Minnesota showing his “Stanley Cup Playoffs beard,” which may well have been inspired by the Islanders from the season before. 



Nearly three weeks before that, on April 23, 1981, the Minneapolis Star referred to North Stars rookie goalie Don Beaupre having “sprouted a very respectable playoff beard.” On May 10, 1981, James F. Clarity in the New York Times writes that the North Stars, during their first-round series with the Boston Bruins, “decided to grow beards as long as they lasted in the playoffs,” without referencing anything about the Islanders of 1980. But certainly many Islanders, including Potvin, Goring, Morrow and Clark Gillies, are sporting full beards in photographs at the end of the 1980 Stanley Cup Final when they had defeated the Philadelphia Flyers.

Ed Westfall was an original Islander from 1972 through 1979 who became a team broadcaster in 1979–80. In Rob Rossi’s 2025 story for The Athletic, he writes of Westfall saying that he and Bryan Trottier have often debated whether the 1980 Islanders truly pioneered playoff beards. “Both men said their Islanders teams in the mid-to-late 1970s also had players who didn’t shave during the playoffs,” wrote Rossi. “But, as the saying goes, winners write history, and … ‘Those teams didn’t win the Cup,’ Westfall said, laughing. ‘When you win and the players have beards, well, there you go — it’s a tradition, I guess.’”

In photographs and videos of the Islanders and the Stanley Cup from 1980 through 1983, only a handful of players are ever fully bearded. And the concept of the playoff beard didn’t catch on immediately after the Islanders’ dynasty. The Edmonton Oilers of 1984 through 1990 were mostly clean-shaven during their five Cup victories in those years. Ian Walker in his Postmedia story of 2011 wonders if the Oilers were just too young to successfully grow beards, or if it was a way to distance themselves from a hated rival. A handful of New York Rangers were growing playoff beards in the mid-1970s, but the Rangers never had much playoff success.

Ian Walker attributes the comeback of the playoff beard to the New Jersey Devils of 1988. The Devils clinched their first playoff spot since moving from Colorado in 1982 on the last day of the 1987–88 season and then advanced all the way to the Eastern Conference Final. “Part of it was respect for the tradition the Islanders had started and part of it was superstition,” said Ken Daneyko, who was a rookie at the time and would go on to win the Cup in New Jersey in 1995, 2000 and 2003. “The playoffs really are an all-for-one mentality and growing a beard gave you a sense of purpose and focus.”