What does the Stanley Cup playoffs mean to me?

Last week Seth Rorabaugh of the PG's Empty Netters wrote a blog post entitled, "What is it?". He wrote, "If someone were to ask us what the Stanley Cup playoffs mean to us, we'd have a hard time giving a simple concise answer". He then goes on to name quite a few memorable moments in playoff history like:

-It's Bobby Orr leaping through the air.
-It's Steve Yzerman blowing a slapper by Jon Casey from Livonia.
-It's Doug Weight lifting the Stanley Cup with one shoulder.

All good stuff. If I could, here's a few I would like to add to that list:

- It's having my two favorite athletes of all time dropping the puck before a Penguins / Red Wings Stanley Cup Final.

- It's Chris Osgood making the so called hockey experts look foolish for calling him the weak link as he shuts out the high powered Penguins twice.

- It's "THE KILL".

- It's Henrik Zetterberg making the greatest defensive play in the history of the Finals on one of the league's greatest players.

- It's Sidney Crosby unable to deal with losing.

- It's Marc-Andre Fleury's butt knocking the puck into the net for the eventual Cup clinching goal.

- It's Osgood having to make an incredible save on Marian Hossa to win the Cup.

- It's a guy named Nick picking up the Cup in Pittsburgh in an arena that's just down the street from where my son Caleb Yzerman Fruscello was born.

- It's the victory parade down Woodward Avenue.

- It's Nick Lidstrom playing hockey less than a week after getting his "inflamed testicle" worked on.

- It's the Red Wings picking up right where they left off by dominating Game One and Game Two.

- It's Evgeni Malkin unable to deal with getting beaten, taking an instigator penalty in the final 5 minutes, but for some reason NOT getting suspended for Game 3.

- It's Malkin recording 3 points in Game 3 to win 4-2.

- It's the Penguins playing with 6 guys on the ice for 20 seconds and not getting penalized.

- It's Pavel Datsyuk coming back early from a broken foot and making a huge difference.

- It's Max Talbot slashing Datsyuk's recently broken foot.

- It's the Penguins taking one cheap shot after another.

- It's the Wings capitalizing on all of those dumb penalties.

- It's Orpik icing the puck, but not having it get called.

- It's the new Claude Lemieux scoring the eventual winning goal.

- It's motivation for future playoff runs.

- It's the villain stealing the Stanley Cup out of Hockeytown.

- It's the good guys bringing it back. (link pending)