DCHP-2

playoff beard DCHP-2 (July 2016)

• 1a n. — Hockey

  a beard whose growth is started at the beginning of the NHL hockey playoffs by a player competing for the Stanley Cup.

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — The tradition is purported to have begun in the late 1970s or early 1980s (see the 1983 and 2013 quotations). According to some sources (see, e.g. the 2011 quotation from a US magazine), the tradition was started in 1980 by the New York Islanders. While playoff beards may have initially been grown by players, currently both fans and players partake in the tradition (see meaning 1b). Playoff beards may be grown for superstitious reasons, as is often the case among players. The reasoning goes, if a player shaves his beard before his team wins the cup, they will not win it this year (see the 2011 quotation).
  Internet domain searches show that the term is most frequent in Canada (see Chart 1).

  See also: hockey  playoff  

  • 1983  Before the series started, a number of Kings players showed signs of growing playoff beards. However, as the series started the Kings opened with freshly-shaved lines. 
  • 1986  Clifford, the only remaining player on the Canadians roster still sporting a "playoff beard," was a little surprised at how easily his team handled the Bulls, a team to which Kingston had lost in its last five games. 
  • 1993  The playoff beard is noticeably grayer than those of his teammates, but Dave Taylor wears it proudly nonetheless. "It's the longest beard I've ever had," the Los Angeles winger said with a grin before last night's game. "I've had a chance to grow it for more weeks than ever before. Hopefully, it will get a little longer." 
  • 2002  But in hockey, superstition is measured in millimetres. That's why NHL playoffs are a barber's nightmare, a feast of fuzz as players who survived the regular season ignore their razors and grow a beard. In a ritual that spans leagues and decades, good teams sport good beards. But few know where the scruff began. [...] While some trace it back to the 1970s Philadelphia Flyers (a.k.a. the Broadstreet Bullies), the NHL playoff beard became enshrined in the late '70s and early '80s. Beards were rugged, intimidating signs that a unified team was much too busy fighting for the Stanley Cup to worry about something as trivial as its appearance. "I think it started in the '60s because the season was pretty much over, players were on their own and they were sending their families home," said Gene Ubriaco, who played for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the '60s and coached them to playoffs in the '80s. 
  • 2011  [The New York Islanders are credited with starting the playoff beard tradition in 1980. Members of the team, including captain Denis Potvin (above, right) and Butch Goring (above, left), thought it would be bad luck to shave in the postseason. Fuzzy logic? Not really. The Islanders took home the Stanley Cup that year — and won the next three.] 
  • 2013  It can be difficult to tell when exactly spring or fall - or even summer - begins in Canada. But there's no mistaking the beginning of Stanley Cup season. In spring, other places burst forth with flowers. In Canada, we just bloom with hair. Facial hair, specifically - provided you have the necessary hormones to sprout it. It's all about the playoff beard, and since time memoriam - so, sometime in the '80s - NHL stars and the fans who just watch them on Hockey Night in Canada have gone feral in solidarity. For the truly superstitious, a playoff beard requires one to go unshaven 'til his team's elimination. But what's acceptable on the ice won't always pass office dress-code, even if your ginger "Galifianakis" would make the angels, and Lanny McDonald, weep. 
  • 2016  Every year fans delight in tracking who has the best playoff beard, and (especially) who has the worst. Chicago captain Jonathan Toews, for instance, may be talented enough to lead his team to three Cups in six years, but even he has reluctantly accepted that a full, thick playoff beard will always remain just out of reach. 

• 1b n. — Hockey

  the beard of a fan whose team is competing in the Stanley Cup Playoffs (see meaning 1a).

  Type: 4. Culturally Significant — Playoff beards were originally grown by participating players, but more recently fans have participated in the tradition. Fans may grow beards for superstitious reasons or as part of charitable fundraising initiatives.

  • 2011  Up on Cambie Street hill, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson knows all about the perils of playoff posturing. Remember his few, pathetic, scraggly sprouts of a playoff beard? Remember those uber-early proclamations of Canucks Day, when the playoffs had barely got rolling, and the team quickly bombed out? 
  • 2011  For decades, the playoff beard has been a superstition practised by players and fans across all levels of competitive hockey in North America. At the beginning of the playoffs, supporters stop shaving their faces as a sign of team unity. Game after game, their beards grow thicker and thicker until the team is eliminated or, with a bit of bristly determination, wins the Stanley Cup. This season, the Heart & Stroke Foundation and the National Hockey League Players' Association are hoping to cash in on the tradition with a new hair-raising fundraiser. The initiative, dubbed the "beard-a-thon," challenges hockey fans and players from across the country to upload a photo of their beard online and raise pledges in support of the foundation. 
  • 2012  "The NHLPA, together with the Heart and Stroke Foundation, encourages hockey fans to join the players in growing their best playoff beards again this year for the NHLPA Beard-a-thon, as we raise money for heart disease and stroke research," says Mathieu Schneider, NHLPA special assistant to the executive director and former NHL player. 
  • 2016  "I think Gord is a true artist, and it's for those reasons he's making things that people want to look at and people want to listen to and people want to try to figure out." Keen says he bumped into Downie coincidentally last week in Toronto. "He was sporting a beautiful NHL playoff beard," he says, pointing to the singer's long-held adoration for hockey. 

• 2 n.

  a beard that is grown at the start of some difficult process or project.

  Type: 3. Semantic Change — Due to the importance of hockey to large sections of the Canadian population, the semantic generalization of a fairly recent meaning to other, non-hockey domains is a predictable event (see, e.g. game seven.)

  See also: game seven (meaning 2)  

  • 1988  ''I think the pressure is off from the Eastern final (Hamilton beat Toronto 1-0) which was more dramatic in terms of if you lose that you're done, whereas here it's the end of the season anyway,'' says Dolan, sporting a spotty facial stubble he calls his playoff beard. NO PRESSURE ''The pressure now is on Vancouver. We've got nothing to lose. They're the ones trying to protect the unbeaten streak.'' 
  • 2012  In Canada and the U.S., however, the long-standing dream of home ownership is alive and well. From the first time some fur-gonched guy with a protruding forehead and a playoff beard stumbled through the entrance to a cave, humankind has embraced home ownership - with or without the optional campfire (all the rage with homemakers back then). 
  • 2013  Michnik, who is 29 going on 30, with an unkempt beard that brags of long hours spent putting his brewery together (he stopped shaving November 1 -- it seems to be a trend among brewery start-ups, akin to playoff beards), decided to open 33 Acres two years ago after several years working as a film and television art director in London and Los Angeles.