“Stevens doesn’t check a guy’s age, his salary, or his Hall of Fame credentials,” Potvin told ESPN.com. “When he lines him up, he hits him.”

And that roughness combined with the beautiful finesse that emerges from the physical play is what makes the Stanley Cup playoffs a unique spectacle. It also makes teams boil inside, creating numerous unnatural rivalries.

The Dallas Stars just knocked off the Edmonton Oilers for the fourth consecutive year. In perhaps the most entertaining series of the first round, the “Oil” put up a helluva fight with young stars Doug Weight, Ryan Smith, George Laraque taking the Grumpy Old Men to six games with all but the last one decided by one goal.

A couple of years ago Claude Lemieux and the Colorado Avalanche left the Detroit Red Wings a bloody mess-and Detroit has never forgiven the mountain men, even though Lemieux is now on his second team since then.

As for Toronto-New Jersey, once Cross’ penalty time had expired, he probably wasn’t regretting his bludgeoning of Holik. Holik had one of the worst third periods in his career. His primary defensive assignment, Leafs captain Mats Sundin had two goals and an assist in the third period as the Leafs came back from a 5-2 deficit to send the game into overtime. Holik sat in the locker room with a big, fat minus 4 rating on the game.

This was the same Holik who held Sundin to virtually nothing in last year’s playoffs and have been battling each other for over fifteen years, even over in Europe playing for Czechoslovakia and Finland, respectively.

That’s a rivalry.

But as the old cliché goes, it ain’t over until its over and Holik got the last laugh as he slid a perfect pass to Randy McKay with five minutes to go in OT to even the series at 1-1.

And there’s still two more months of this.