Emotions or not, these guys have 4 months of game rust on them, and haven’t taken a regular body check etc since March. They need some sort of game action to get back into that groove, and really one game no matter how intense, won’t be enough to get rust off.
The play in round comes up on you quick. No one on any team will be really ready for Game 1 either, so you hope to win that coin flip. By the time some of these guys get even basic game feet under them it may be Game 3 and by that time you can add the pressure of having gone through all this bubble stuff, for it to be all worthless, if game 2 got away and you are going home until November in 60 minutes if you don’t win.
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