Monthly Archives: June 2026

It’s Coming Around Again

Hockey History, Personal, Sports History

There’s certainly a lot going on in sports these days. So, let’s start with congratulations to the Carolina Hurricanes … a team that, admittedly, I’ve never paid much attention to. Obviously a team without a lot of top stars, but a team that (and this is not an original thought of mine) definitely resembles their coach Rod Brind’Amour and plays a stifling brand of team-first hockey. Their first championship in 20 years, and the neat thing about Brind’Amour is he’s just the fourth man in NHL history to both captain (2006) and coach (2026) the same team to the Stanley Cup. He joins Hall of Famers Cooney Weiland (Boston), Hap Day (Toronto) and Toe Blake (Montreal) in that little club.

In Toronto, the Maple Leafs farm team the Toronto Marlies seems well on their way to the American Hockey League Calder Cup championship, which they won previously in 2018. Hardly seems like a boatload of their players will suddenly turn the Leafs into Stanley Cup contenders, though. I’m sure Easton Cowan has gotten some useful experience, and perhaps goalie Artur Akhtyamov has vaulted himself up the pecking order … especially with the recent trade of Joseph Woll. But it’s not like the Marlies’ 2018 champions did much to bolster Maple Leaf playoff pursuits in recent years. And who the heck is Jim Hiller? I mean, I guess I must have known who he was when the was a Maple Leafs assistant coach under Mike Babcock and I was still working on the NHL Guide & Record Book. And I may have been vaguely aware of his being fired by the LA Kings this season … but I feel like when the Leafs hired him on Wednesday that was the first I’d ever hear of him!

Then there was the news on Tuesday that Hockey Night in Canada will no longer air on the CBC. It’s a blow to history and tradition (and an evil triumph of money above everything else), but really, it hasn’t been Hockey Night in Canada since Sportsnet took over in 2013 (or maybe dating back to 2008, when CBC dropped the theme song!) even if Saturday night and playoff games still aired on the CBC until a few days ago. Funny thing is, you can watch hockey on some channel (mostly a Sportsnet channel) every night of the week, but I don’t watch nearly as much as I did when we got one Wednesday night Leafs game and Hockey Night in Canada on Saturdays during my youth. But I feel bad for anyone who doesn’t have a cable package that includes Sportsnet and will either have to pay more or stop watching.

And of course, in Toronto and Vancouver, and in a host of other American and Mexican cities, (and cross most of the globe) the big news in sports is the World Cup. Never been much into soccer myself. I get that it’s a big deal all around the world. And I know my brothers and my nephews are into it. I don’t want to discourage anyone who’s enjoying it now … and I’m sure I’ll tune in later today when Canada faces Qatar. Because, you know, Qatar. Who doesn’t want to watch Canada versus Qatar? Playing soccer…

But interestingly to me at least, the recent sports news I’ve found myself thinking about the most is the New York Knicks’ NBA championship. I’m the furthest thing from a basketball fan these days, but I guess there’s something about the first title since 1973 that’s appealing to even a don’t-live-and-die-with-’em Maple Leafs fan. It was sort of fun watching the New York-born celebrities getting so excited about it. But I had my own odd sort of personal connection.

I used to watch basketball more than the almost none I watch now. I remember the commercials for NBA games on the American channels of my TV childhood — “Buffalo, home of the Braves!” And, of course, I knew of their star, Bob McAdoo (whose distant cousin Charles is currently with the Blue Jays). I never saw the Braves play at Maple Leaf Gardens when they’d occasionally play home games there in the early 1970s, but I did see the Harlem Globetrotters!

I first got into basketball in 1979 when we were skiing in Colorado at March break and the news on TV was hyping the NCAA championship featuring Larry Bird of Indiana State and Magic Johnson of Michigan State. I continued to follow those two during their NBA rivalry with the Celtics and Lakers. Their basketball heyday coincided with my basketball heyday when I worked with Digital Media, a small “electronic newsroom” in Toronto from 1986 to 1990. We watched, and wrote about, a ton of NBA and NCAA basketball in those days … and that’s where my tiny Knicks connection comes from.

I knew (though I don’t remember how or why) about Willis Reed’s heroic turn on a badly injured leg in Game 7 versus the Lakers inspiring the Knicks to their first championship in 1970. And about he and Walt Frazier leading them to another in 1973. And about the team’s run of mediocrity after that, which was already seeming to be a pretty long one by 1988–89 when they were suddenly a contender again. We at Digital Media had access to satellite channels in those days that no one I knew had at home, and I guess we were sometimes watching Knicks games on MSG (Madison Square Garden) Network or something like it. And I remember this commercial. As I recall, it was full of 1970 and 1973 Knicks footage interspersed with highlights of the current team with a Carly Simon song playing under it:

I know nothing stays the same.
But if you’re willing to play the game.
It’s coming around again.

I’ve been trying to find it with Google and YouTube searches for a while now with no success. But, I’m pretty sure it was a real thing! I’ve certainly thought of it a lot over the years.

I thought about it in 2015, when the Jays suddenly got red hot down the stretch to win the American League East for the first time since the World Series years of 1992 and 1993.


I thought about it a lot last year when the Jays finally made it back to the World Series

I thought about it on behalf of Knicks fans as their team got red hot in the playoffs.

I don’t like change … but I do know nothing stays the same. And, I guess, sometimes, if you’re willing to play the game, it really might come around again.

So, hang on Leafs fans. I’m not sure about the new management yet. But, maybe…!

Playoff Beards

Hockey History

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.

Vegas players on Tuesday night display facial hair of varying lengths.

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.”

Ken Morrow was bearded before he joined the Islanders after the 1980 Miracle on Ice.

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.

Kevin Maxwell from the 1981 Minnesota Tribune and Brad Park with Detroit.



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.’” (Apparently, a handful of New York Rangers were growing playoff beards in the mid-1970s, but the Rangers never had much playoff success.)

The beard of Pittsburgh Jordan Staal this playoff season is among the bushiest.

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.

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.”