Get your playoff beards ready and pick a pair of underwear you’ll be comfortable in for weeks at a time. That’s right, it’s time for the Stanley Cup playoffs.

For my money, nothing rivals the night-in, night-out excitement that the NHL playoffs offer. Each round doesn’t take three weeks to finish, games that end in regulation don’t last four hours, and overtime playoff hockey might be the most intense event that sports has to offer. If you think Cinderella only lives in the NCAA Tournament, take a look at last year’s NHL Western Conference playoffs: Teams ranked 5-8 took out the 1-4 seeds in the first round, and the eighth-seeded Oilers fell two goals short in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals of pulling off the impossible.

Those reasons are why it’s such a shame that the league killed itself after coming back from the lockout. It is ridiculous how badly the NHL screwed itself by signing its TV contract with OLN (now Versus) and hiding its product somewhere between the Home & Garden Channel and Indian Music TV. ESPN buries vital NHL news sometime after NASCAR and Arena Football, so the lay fan gets so little exposure that he forgets about the league entirely. Even the All-Star game was scheduled on cable on a Wednesday at the same time as ratings giant, American Idol. The game is so much better now, and nobody knows it. But I digress.

I have to be honest, I am much more familiar with the Eastern Conference, being that I live in Manhattan and don’t hear much about the Anaheims and San Joses of the world. Therefore, I do not want to make it seem like I know the West by reciting stats I can easily find on NHL.com, so I will stick to the Eastern Conference. That being said, the first round gives us some very intriguing matchups. Here it goes…