All season, regardless of sport, passionate fans of sports teams across North America have one goal: Playoffs. Anything short of that goal is seen as failure, and oftentimes just making the playoffs is not adequate for a franchise deemed “competitive” by its fans and onlookers. Despite this, all parties involved know just how chaotic and precarious the playoffs can be.

For whatever reason, the NHL playoffs possess a volatility not seen in other sports.

Take the latest, and potentially greatest, example of this volatility, the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning were the best team in hockey by an incredible margin, having one of hockey’s best-ever regular seasons. But the mighty Lightning were stymied by the fairly upstart Columbus Blue Jackets, and were swept out of the playoffs in four straight games.

“For six days in April, Columbus was the better team.” said Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper.

Nobody knows how or why this happens. Why did a team that dominated the National Hockey League for 7 months all of the sudden find it impossible to win? Asked after the end of the series, Lightning captain Steven Stamkos said “If we had the answers, we would have found a way to win the game. It sucks.”

In not understanding why his team dropped out of the playoffs in four straight games, Stamkos found that the only way to understand the NHL playoffs. You can’t understand it.

All preconceived notions of what should or shouldn’t happen fly out the window. Matchups that yielded standard, run-of-the-mill games in January are now suddenly hectic encounters, both teams scrambling for every inch on the ice. To try to decipher a rhyme or reason to it beyond “both teams are really trying hard out there” is a fool’s errand.

Almost harder to understand is how the Blues, largely considered to be dead and buried in December, are not just in the playoffs, but are now two wins over Winnipeg away from the second round. The Blues have survived trials and tribulations to reach this point, including firing former head coach Mike Yeo and teammates getting into fights during practices.

That all happened *after* team general manager Doug Armstrong had made a case that the Blues were a playoff team and Stanley Cup contender. Luckily for the organization and its fans, somewhere in January the Blues found their rhythm, and most importantly, a goaltender.

Blues fans are incredibly familiar with April. In 51 seasons of existence in the National Hockey League, the Blues have only missed the playoffs 9 times. Unfortunately, and it pains me as a Blues fan to write this, despite making the playoffs in over 80% of the seasons they’ve played in,

the Blues have never won a Stanley Cup. Ever.

While sure, fans can hope and dream for the Stanley Cup trophy to parade down Market Street in downtown St. Louis, perhaps that in itself is a bit too optimistic, given the odds and precedent set in previous seasons. But it’s the NHL playoffs! The ridiculously impossible is possible.

If Tampa Bay can lose, why can’t St. Louis win?