Related Resources • Why Stanley Cup hockey is the best show in sports • The keys to NHL playoff survival • The Stanley Cup Bunker

Dateline: May 7/02

If the goal of a newspaper is to stand out from the competition and grab the reader's attention, then the Toronto Sun certainly turned the trick last week.

The sports section featured a full-page photo of Maple Leafs' goaltender Curtis Joseph. With eyes cast downward and shoulders slumped, he looked very much like a goalie having a bad day. Next to him the enormous headline read: "Joe Sieve."

Rather unfair, to be sure. The other Leafs shared the blame for Toronto's 5-0 loss to Ottawa in the opening game of their Eastern Conference semi-final. But the photo neatly encapsulated a city's emotional response to the blowout: crushing disappointment, disdain, petulance and panic. Toronto has a passionate but testy relationship with its beloved Blue and White. Hysterical outbursts are common and overreaction to all things Maple Leaf is the norm.

On Saturday came the overreaction to the overreaction, courtesy of John Davidson, one of the game's more popular talking heads. He appeared on Hockey Night in Canada to scold the Sun, defending Joseph as a great player, a stand-up guy, etc. The endorsement was perfectly timed. By the end of the night the Maple Leafs had tied the series and Joseph, having stopped 54 shots in a 3-2 triple-overtime thriller, was once again the toast of Toronto. He reportedly made sports reporters wait thirty minutes before appearing for post-game interviews. Maybe he was busy.

And so the tempest passed, for now. Just another fun-filled episode in the eight-week miniseries we call the Stanley Cup playoffs.

NHL play-off hockey is dramatic, but the breaks between games are mini-dramas of equal intensity. Winners are lauded as athletic titans. Losers are subject to show trials, held under a burning spotlight while fans, reporters and various experts hurl accusations and demand explanations. NHL players would be well advised to cancel the newspaper, cut off the cable and unplug the radio at playoff time. During the regular season an occasional weak goal, squandered scoring chance or uninspired shift might go unnoticed. But in the heat of the Stanley Cup run, the press box gang will grab that moment and hold it up as an example of declining skill, over-rated talent, tepid commitment, lousy work ethic, failed nerve and weak character. Some of them will even get personal.

Several reliable subplots add to the furor: Players trash talk. Coaches needle each other. General managers rail against referees and sling arrows at the goons and schemers who make up the opposing squad. When they aren't recording it all, reporters ponder team medical reports, trying to decipher the truth behind phrases like "upper body injury," "day-to-day" and "out indefinitely."

Veterans in big NHL towns like Toronto have seen it all before, and it likely takes more than a bad pun on his name to keep Curtis Joseph awake at night. He's been declared a Stanley Cup stiff so many times in his career it's a wonder he hasn't been embalmed. Joseph knows it only takes one good game, maybe even one good save, to turn it all around. Stop an overtime breakaway and suddenly he's King Curtis again. And what happened to Joe Sieve? That's yesterday's news, lining the birdcage. Forget it ever happened. Until we see how he plays next game.