Like the octopus in Detroit, Stompin’ Tom Connors, and knocking seven bells out of each other, the playoff beard is a hockey tradition. Players love it, fans love it – it’s a fundamental part of the NHL experience. But one person doesn’t like the playoff beard, and – go figure! – he’s a television executive.
Mark Lazarus, the chairman of NBC Sports – and evidently an unreconstructed beardophobe – revealed to the Chicago Tribune that he lobbied the NHL and its players to end their postseason tradition. His reasoning? The excess facial hair hurts player recognition for fans, and prevents new stars from coming to the fore at the time in the season when the games are highest rated.
“The players won’t like this, but I wish they all would stop growing beards in the postseason,” Lazarus said. “Let’s get their faces out there. Let’s talk about how young and attractive they are. What model citizens they are. [Hockey players] truly are one of a kind, among professional athletes.
“I know it’s a tradition and superstition, but I think [the beards do] hurt recognition. They have a great opportunity with more endorsements. Or simply more recognition with fans saying, ‘That guy looks like the kid next door,’ which many of these guys do. I think that would be a nice thing.”
Hmm. Much to unpick.
Lazarus makes some good points. Playoff beards can rather be rather unpleasant. Untrimmed, bristly, dripping with sweat and ice and testosterone – they’re at the bad end of the hirsute spectrum. Hockey players are an attractive breed – bigger than soccer players, swifter than football players; thrilling, urgent, a little bit savage – and Lazarus is right: let’s get their faces out there. Henrik Lundqvist, Ryan Kesler, Johnny Oduya: handsome men, agreed. Show them off, by all means.
And one of a kind? Sure. With its skill and athleticism, Hockey offers the alluring combination of power and precision, energy and élan. Ron MacLean, the doyen of CBC’s hockey coverage, put it simply when he explained why hockey players are so distinctive: “Mentally and physically, they’re quick.”
But Mark Lazarus is a television executive. Like the pontiff lecturing his parishioners about sex, his background informs his thinking. And the truth is that beards and network TV don’t mix. To quote that old Bill Bryson line: US television is “full of actors who, when given the choice of being able to act and having really great hair, they’d go for the hair.” In the mind of the television executive, clean shaven is the zenith, and beards are for communists, survivalists, religious fanatics, and Poseidon. The idea that beards are bad is daft and conservative, but this is network TV, and network TV makes the Rotary Club look forward-thinking.
Plus, this is hockey, not an Old Spice commercial from the 1980s. We’re watching top-level sport, not The Young and the Restless. Sport is about individuality, freedom of expression. Playoff beards represent superstition, and loyalty, and unity, and camaraderie – those essential elements that make sport so distinctive, so different, so fun.
Fortunately, we can relax: the NHL, and the players’ union, the NHLPA, have listened respectfully, taken Lazarus’s comments on board, and decided to do precisely nothing about it.
“I’m just a TV guy,” Lazarus said. “They don’t want to listen to me.”
Go get em’, guys.
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