I’m off to play another game of rink bandy. Missed our last game, due to “scheduling problems.” I came there an hour too late.

Anyway, below you’ll find an nhl.com column about the sport and the team. And if you like that one, I’ve got a whole book – Off The Post – of columns for you.

Thursday, Feburary 15, 2007
Crunch time
My sense of time has always been askew. For me, January isn’t the beginning of the new year. August is. When I was a kid, all the important things – school, hockey, new season of Happy Days – started in August and ended in May.

And with the exception of Happy Days, even the important things didn’t get really important until after the holidays.

The final exams. The playoffs.

Sure it’s nice to see Sid The Kid score goals while gliding on one knee, Alex Ovechkin score one working the ice like a bobsled pilot, and even Patrik Stefan missing the empty net was priceless, but there is nothing like the decisive games in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

That’s still a few months away, but with the trade deadline looming, teams are definitely starting to get ready. The pieces have to start falling into place right about now.

The playoffs bring out the best in players, and teams. Each year, we have a surprise team that may or may not go all the way, but that definitely outperforms itself and all expectations.

In our shinny league, that would be my team. Granted, it’s not really hockey. It’s rink bandy, which means that we play in a hockey rink, but with bandy sticks and a ball. If you’re not familiar with bandy (it’s like the other hockey on ice), look it up. It’s interesting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandy).

We finished second in the regular season standings, which, admittedly, was a little above par for us. To give you an idea of what our team and league look like, you just need to know that I am pretty much the youngest player on the team, and I’m in my, uh, thirties, but barely, and that in a game last week the other team sent in a guy with skates that had that white plastic plug at the end of the blade.

However, our playoffs are the toughest kind: Best out of one.

You lose and you’re out. Season’s over. Bye, bye.

We played our quarterfinal game tonight, and as luck would have it, we met the team that finished first in our division. They had two full lines, we had one extra guy on the bench. They had speed and strategy, we had … seven guys who refused to lose. Simple as that.

And talking about the game in the locker room afterwards, and listening to the guys analyze the game and the other team, feeling good about our Miracle on Ice, I realized that that’s what the playoffs are all about. Survival. Overcoming adversity. And that’s what good drama is.

I also realized that our team has all the elements of a winning team.

We have a great goalie that lets our defensemen take some liberties in our own end. We have an excellent defense, guys that aren’t afraid to block the shots or get in front of a slow-moving steam engine wearing a white sweater with the name “Van Damme” on the back.

We have forwards that forecheck, backcheck, and grind, and we have forwards that are as fast as lightning.

And then we have one Finnish dude because you need a Finn to win.

But most of all, we just wanted to play at least one more game. We wanted it really, really bad.

Just as bad as I would like the Stanley Cup Playoffs to begin already.