Stretch drive is a bruising quest for green and silver

The beauty of the stretch: teams like the 2006 Oilers, who get hot, grab an 8 seed, and go on a surprising and deep playoff run. Jeff Vinnick/Getty Images

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If playoffs are the Big Dance, welcome to the NHL's precursor: the Eighth Place Dance of Death.

This is not Dancing with the Stars, but Dancing for a Chance to Play the Stars ... or the Red Wings ... or the Senators. Lower your gaze, hockey fans. In March, the lower half of the standings, at least for the teams on the playoff bubble, are infinitely more intriguing than the goings-on of those already tucked snugly in their playoff berths.

If a team qualifies for the playoffs - cue the cliché - anything can happen. Well, almost anything. An eighth-seed is probably not going to win the Stanley Cup this year. You still have to go with the chalk.

Since 1996-97, no team lower than fifth overall in the points (Detroit in 1997) has won the silverware. There was a lot of harrumphing on that subject prior to the recent trade deadline, most of it laughably shortsighted. If success is defined as narrowly as a Stanley Cup parade, well, okay. Then the competition for the final playoff spots is of as much significance as a July 4 hot dog eating contest. But let's leave our little preoccupations with only winning championships - you can't spell fantasy without f-a-n - and enter the real world, the business world, of hockey.

For an NHL team, a playoff berth -- any playoff berth -- is like one of Willy Wonka's golden tickets. There is the income from guaranteed home dates, a minimum of two and the possibility quite a few more. For many teams, the gross revenue of a first-round game is $1 million-plus. The numbers increase with the rounds, as do the prices of the tickets. (With taxes, a seat in the reds at the Bell Centre in Montreal will cost in excess of $400 if the Canadiens reach the Stanley Cup Final in June.) In 2006, the Carolina Hurricanes grossed roughly $3 million per home game in the final.

The good feeling of an extended playoff run trickles into the next season, of course, when a team goes about the sweaty business of trying to boost its season-ticket base. There is an economic imperative to March, something you don't see in a stats summary. Now return for a moment to Carolina, the 2006 champions.

In a seven-game final, the Hurricanes dispatched a No. 8 seed, the Edmonton Oilers, who had shored up their goaltending by acquiring Dwayne Roloson and then sneaked into the playoffs. Those Oilers might have been an anomaly, but consider that in 2003 the lower-seeded teams -- Nos. 5 through 8 -- won every first-round series in the Western Conference.

Other Davids have crashed the postseason party with loaded slingshots in the past decade. No. 8 seed San Jose shocked St. Louis in seven first-round games in 2000. No. 8 Ottawa ousted New Jersey, four games to twp, in the opening round of 1998. When the No. 8 Golden State Warriors beat the No. 1 Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the NBA playoffs last spring, it was hailed as the roundball equivalent of Buster Douglas knocking out Mike Tyson, one of the most stunning upsets ever. For those who love hockey, the ultimate was the 24-41-15 Los Angeles Kings upending Wayne Gretzky's Oilers, who had 48 more regular-season points, in 1982. Long live the Miracle on Manchester.

The point: When an eighth seed gels at the proper moment or gets white-hot goaltending and beats a President's Trophy-winner, the hockey world barely raises an eyebrow. So keep an eye on that Led Zeppelin Reunion Tour that Colorado Avalanche general manager François Giguère is staging with the deadline repatriation of Peter Forsberg and Adam Foote. Duly note Cristobal Huet's work in Washington's net as the Capitals zero in simultaneously on eighth place and third place, the gift seed that goes to even unworthy division winners.

Other teams are wrestling for seeds and seeding. Those teams - including Buffalo, Nashville and Phoenix (no playoff series wins for the Jets/Coytotes franchise since 1987) - are struggling for their playoff lives and more, much of it green as well as silver. They're not leaving without a fight.