Clean-shaven post-season a hairy proposal

One would think during the National Hockey League’s work stoppage, which wiped out the entire 2005-06 hockey season, that at some point in time, the issue of playoff beards might have been broached.
Guess not.
Scraggly looking hockey players lost enough on the collective bargaining agreement, one supposes, that the order to lose facial hair would have been a welcome clause to the final pact. Alas, somehow the issue, or making it permissible to remove a beard while a fella’s team still playing remains locked in the vault of deep, dark secrets.
The deep-seated superstition is the shaving of a beard somehow could impact on a team’s success.
No one wants to be the guy messing with team karma by placing shaving gel and a Gillette to face until that fella’s team is once and for all removed from the tournament.
Now here we go into the final pairing of the tournament with the Carolina Hurricanes and Edmonton Oilers squaring off and, yikes, it resembles a showdown of Grizzly Adams and the Bearded Lady.
It would have been appropriate to have the CBA include a clause permitting players to return to a clean-shaven look immediately after each round without penalty from the hockey gods. That way, no more than two weeks worth of growth would be able to amass on a fellow’s mug.
As it stands, two months of scratchy, unattractive facial growth can make a fan’s eyes water just imagining what might be living in that mass of hair.
Remember when Rocket Richard got two minutes for looking so good? Must have been during the regular season.