HAIL TO THE KINGS

The Los Angeles Kings have just won the Stanley Cup for the 2013-14 NHL season

The National Hockey League (NHL) playoffs are the toughest of all sports playoffs and the Stanley Cup is the oldest sports trophy in North America.

In order to get into the Stanley Cup playoffs, hockey teams have to go through an eighty game regular season schedule, much like the schedule for the National Basketball Association. But there is a huge difference between the beating hockey players and basketball players take, and for that matter, football players.

The top eight teams in the Eastern Conference and in the Western Conference of the NHL are paired-off in the playoffs. Each playoff series is a best of seven games. There are four series in the quarterfinals, two in the semifinals, and one in the conference finals. The winner of each conference gets to play for the Stanley Cup.

If every series went to seven games, the eventual winner would have played at total of 28 playoff games. However, many of the series are over in five or six games. Nevertheless, even if a series were swept in four games, the constant hard knocks taken by hockey players are almost unimaginable.

The boards that surround the ice surface of a hockey rink are unforgiving. Despite the protective gear worn by hockey players, when they get checked (blocked, for you football fans) into the boards, it hurts! Then there is the occasional hockey stick to the face. And when a hockey player gets hit by that hard rubber puck flying at close to, or over 100 mph, that really fucking smarts! You've sure got to admire the guts it takes to go down on the ice in an attempt to block an opposing player's shot with your body.

While there is much pain in basketball and football, it just doesn’t compare to the pain suffered in each game by hockey players. During the playoffs each team will play every other day and sometimes on consecutive days. That doesn’t give much time for the pain to go away. In between each period and after each game, out come the ice packs. All together that adds up to the fact that most hockey players play hurt in every game.

The grueling NHL playoff schedule makes hockey players the toughest of all professional athletes. Many of the players will continue to feel the hurt well beyond the end of the playoffs. That is why there is no doubt that the Stanley Cup playoffs are the toughest playoffs in all of sports. And that is why the oldest sports trophy in North America is so prized by those who get their names engraved on it.

On Friday night LA time (Saturday morning NY time) the Los Angeles Kings won the coveted Stanley Cup in double overtime of game five in the championship series with the New York Rangers. In order to get to the final series the Kings won three game 7s away from home against the San Jose Sharks, the Anaheim Ducks and against last season’s Stanley Cup champions, the Chicago Blackhawks.

The Kings had to play 26 games of bone crushing, bruising play-off ice hockey to win the cup. The Kings have now won the Stanley Cup twice in three years. Hail to the Kings!