DORIAN GEIGER
Sports Editor

Athletes and their fans are notorious for their quirky and often eccentric superstitious behaviour during the playoff season.

The hurling of dead octopi onto the ice in Detroit after a Red Wings win, the iconic baseball rally cap, or refraining from sexual activity before the big game. Yes, such conduct is about as zany as sports superstitions get.

However, one tradition sticks out among the rest and truly has grown since its inception by the New York Islanders in the 1980s. This crazy post-season convention is none other than the iconic playoff beard.

And in the midst of the 2010 NHL post-season, the team-wide playoff beard has quietly turned 20 years old.

Though the playoff beard tradition is thought to have stemmed from professional hockey and the Islanders’ NHL dynasty between 1980-84, the beard has risen to enormous popularity throughout all levels of hockey and has even expanded into professional football and, to a lesser extent, basketball. Even university students rock the “finals beard” during the student equivalent to playoffs — exam season.

To clarify, a player or team typically wear the beard from the beginning of playoffs until being eliminated or claiming the Stanley Cup. The beard has been fairly common within hockey culture the past 15 years, but disappeared following the three back-to-back Stanley Cup runs made by the Islanders in the ’80s. Bringing it back were the 1995 New Jersey Devils who resurrected the beard during their successful Stanley Cup campaign more than a decade ago.

As far as individual players go, many credit Bill “Cowboy” Flett of the 1973-74 Philadelphia Flyers for instigating the playoff beard due to his year-long display of facial hair.

Today, it is highly unlikely you’ll see a Stanley Cup team whose majority of players aren’t sporting facial hair. From grizzly to greasy, to just plain pathetic, there have been some memorable beards and some pretty patchy ones over the years too.

Devils’ Ken Daneyko sported a mangy mop that along with his missing front teeth made the New Jersey defenceman look like more of a coin-hungry homeless person than a professional hockey player. And most people could count more fingers on their hands than the miniscule number of follicles sprouting hair on Sydney Crosby’s boyish face in the early years of his Penguins career.

The Islanders were, however, the pioneers of this screwball tradition due to the dogged persistence of the entire lineup. When the post-season rolled around on Long Island, there were few players on the bench not hosting beards.

But what really sparked the bearded tradition?

Most of the former Islanders players from these championship seasons have often stated that it might have had to do with not wanting to change anything when they were playing well, right down to basic hygienic practices. This same mantra sometimes applied to players’ clothes, too — not changing when things were on the upswing, underwear included.

Forgetting superstition for a second, the idea behind the beard is also based on teamwork. Coming together as a collective through bearded unity seems to boost team morale and puts a fun spin on something as serious as the post-season for professional hockey players.

As the NHL’s popularity continues to grow, so will the scruffy tradition that has become an annual phenomenon — and the only demographic that seems to be complaining are the players’ wives.

– –
image: Flickr