Players in 'hairsute' of the coveted Cup

Among playoff hockey's manly charms is its barbarism. As opposed to barber-ism. There you have it: The traditional "playoff beard" explained.

In playoff hockey, rugged souls are far too busy with the task at hand, working mightily at controlling win-or-go-home developments, to concern themselves with insignificant matters such as facial grooming. They are operating apart from normal routine, on an odd calendar and in hostile situations, caught in the sporting manifestation of the chaos theory.

No orderly, predictable place, the playoffs thus engender the lifestyle accoutrements of bush pilots, trappers, hippies, Unabombers. Or, at least, the look associated with those occupations.

Unless, as one of the early playoff-beard practitioners, Islanders Hall of Famer Clark Gillies, put it: "It's like every other superstition. You win, you don't change anything."

This NHL custom apparently started in the late 1970s, possibly by Gillies and his Islanders mates as they powered up for their run to four consecutive Stanley Cup titles in the early 1980s. Some have embraced it more than others (sometimes in accordance with players' age and peach-fuzz limitations; see Sidney Crosby).

Even Gillies, surrounded in those days by the lumberjack profiles of Dave Lewis, Ken Morrow, Denis Potvin, John Tonelli, Billy Smith, et al, isn't exactly sure of the roots, though he agreed that "now it's an absolute tradition. Once the playoffs start, you start growing your playoff beard."

To shave only (and just as ritually) upon elimination from the postseason or hoisting the Cup in triumph.

To University of Toronto psychiatry professor Allan Peterkin, "a whole bunch of things are going on" with the playoff beard. A pogonologist (beard scholar) and author of the book "One Thousand Beards: A Cultural History of Facial Hair," Peterkin noted, among other aspects, the marketing angle.

The playoff beard "is playful and it gets everybody talking," Peterkin said in a telephone interview. "Up here in Canada, the whole notion of public relations has [the beer company] Molson challenging fans to grow a beard. They show various types of facial growth so you can emulate your favorite star."

That's the "solidarity" component, the consideration that hockey teammates are "changing our faces as we get ready for battle together," Peterkin said. "And there's the symbolic notion that your attention is only on that, not on grooming or anything else."

Also: "It is superstition," he said, "like players who don't have sex before a game. It's back to the Samson and Delilah thing" - hair as a source of power and fearing the risk of losing one with the other.

An entirely practical reason for the playoff beard, Gillies said, is that "a lot less cuts and bruises show." Plus, the growth literally measures progress through the playoffs.

"You watch the guys interviewed who haven't shaved," Peterkin said. "They're still in the game. A beard often marks that this is a different time in a man's life. And maybe a more important time."

So while in some instances, Peterkin said, the beard can signal mourning - consider the dropping-out harvests of politicians Al Gore and Bill Richardson, or the lost wanderings of late-night talk-show hosts David Letterman and Conan O'Brien during the writers' strike - in hockey, it's the opposite. Whatever other hairs there are to split between the Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins - goaltending, power-play strength, a 3-1 Pittsburgh lead - at this point, they both remain hirsute.

"Another thing going on," Peterkin said, "is doing it because they can get away with it. Here are guys who get to play hockey for a living and grow a big, bushy beard and the boss won't say anything about it. They're privileged."

That would address the iconoclast/revolutionary factor. Trotsky had a beard, and Che Guevara. Clearly, there is a danger in beard overanalysis - Hemingway had a beard, but also Freud; Confucius, as well as two members of ZZ Top - but the hockey playoff model does tend toward the conflict game face. A show of potency.

In nature, Peterkin said, "when apes are about to fight, they stick their lower jaw out; it makes them look more virile. It's called jaw jut. Maybe this is the human equivalent to jaw jut."

In researching his treatise on beards, Peterkin also found studies that "whenever they got women to rate faces of men with or without beards, the women always rated the bearded face as more masculine, more powerful.

"I think it's back to the Samson and Delilah thing. My hormones are raging and here it is on my face."



Editor's note: We had to go back to 1979 to find a picture of John Jeansonne's playoff beard.

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