For teams scrapping to grab a playoff seed or to climb into a better playoff position, each game already feels like playoffs.

The intensity is there, and your team realizes the importance of each shift. 

For coaches, their job is to have their team in top form.

This battle for positioning has a wonderful short-term benefit. When the regular season ends, these teams aren't trying to flip a switch. That switch has been locked in the "on" position since the playoff push began.

For teams that have had their playoff seed locked up, getting into the "on" position isn't so easy. Fourth-liners have been seeing more minutes, the big guns have seen fewer minutes and, in some cases, were given entire nights off. Backup goalies are seeing ice time while practices are devoted to preparing for not just the first round, but the whole playoff marathon.

To prepare for the long run – which could last up to two months – teams are focused on the ever-crucial components of rest and health. 

Fitness is no problem by this point of the year, but recovery is. A few quality bike rides are all that's needed to maintain your already fantastic cardio so practice usually consists of reviewing fundamentals and putting in the time and repetition of systems. Teams knows how to play by the time that 82^nd buzzer sounds.

A rested team, however, can easily get cut up by the razor-sharp team flying in for night one of the playoffs. The team that's been grinding hasn't seen rust in months.

For the team coming in as the underdog – the road team, with their game sharp – those first few games are crucial. If they don't win a couple of those first three, the series is over. As long as it may take, as slowly it may happen, every team's switched is firmly locked in the "on" position by the end of game three. Suddenly the underdog is up against a much healthier, rested "on" team.

Upsets usually happen because that razor-sharp underdog was ready to brawl from night one. There's already a certain fire, intensity, and precision to their execution.

What happens for the established team is all too common: You grind all summer in the gym. You hustle all year, learning systems, your linemates, and your coach. You travel, you sleep in hotels and suddenly one day, when home ice advantage is locked up, your coach says "take it easy."

Take what, now?

You've started feeling like a soldier. As much as you're hurt, tired and frustrated, most guys (there are exceptions, of course) only know one way to play – all out. Your coach isn't asking you not to try your hardest in games, but he is in practice.

One of my coaches would tell us, in percentages, how easy we could take it before playoffs.

Just go at about 80 percent today guys ...

But for most players, their switch doesn't come with a dimmer. It's on or off. There's no sliding down the effort 20 percent, so you flip to "off."

Then game day numero uno goes like this: a good sleep, a light morning skate, the puck drops to start playoffs, and it feels like you got pulled out mid-massage and chucked into a tornado.

It only takes a few hard knocks to realize you're scrapping with a Tasmanian Devil, as many times as you've mentally tried to prepare yourself for big game speed.

With round one of the playoffs set to begin in five days, the question is, which underdog is going to pull a team out of their relaxing mud bath and swallow them whole?

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