Playoff beard
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A playoff-beard is the superstitious practice of a National Hockey League (NHL) player not shaving his beard during the Stanley Cup playoffs. The player stops shaving when his team enters the playoffs and does not shave until his team is eliminated or wins the Stanley Cup. It is believed that the tradition was started in the 1980s by the New York Islanders. The tradition has also spread to hockey leagues in Europe.
Since that point in time, the playoff beard has also expanded into the National Football League (NFL) and, to a lesser extent, Major League Baseball. One notable example of the playoff beard is Denver Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer. A recent example is Ben Roethlisberger of the Pittsburgh Steelers. The practice still remains the same, with the player(s) not shaving until they either win the championship or are eliminated from the postseason. In the late 1990s, members of the New York Knicks, including Patrick Ewing, Charles Oakley, and Allan Houston grew playoff beards during New York's playoff runs. Recently, Cleveland Cavaliers Lebron James and Zydrunas Ilgauskas have also taken to sporting playoff beards, thus bringing the tradition into a new age of basketball.
Playoff beards have also become a trend for hockey fans once their team enters the playoffs.
Male students at some universities in the United States have also begun to sport the playoff beard - not shaving between the period when regular classes end and their last final exam.[citation needed]
One may trim the beard after a loss in an effort to change the team's luck.
Prior to this particular NHL superstition, hockey star Stan Mikita (and probably many others) did not shave on game day, as the cold air tended to irritate the skin.
And some years before this NHL tradition, tennis superstar Björn Borg used to let his beard grow prior to the Wimbledon tournament. One year, Sports Illustrated had a cover story previewing Wimbledon, and Borg's photo was captioned, "The beard has begun."
Some say that the fictional character Admiral Adama's moustache in the reimagined TV-Show Battlestar Galactica is a form of playoff beard.
During the 2003 Stanley Cup Playoffs goalie Jean-Sébastien Giguère appeared twice in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Once, between series while the beard was still on. And once just after the end of the playoffs, without the beard. Giguere commented that he and his wife both hated the beard, but that he did it for the team.
External links
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