There’s no time like the NHL playoffs to help you realize just how prevalent the reliance on narratives really is.

Unlike the regular season, when what passes for analysis can quickly be forgotten by the time the next opponent rolls into town, in the playoffs, those lazy narratives are put to the test the very next game. And when put under the spotlight like that, they usually fail miserably.

Luckily for everyone involved, narratives are like buses. There’ll be another one along any minute.

Let’s look at a couple of examples from the last couple weeks or so.

First, the Rangers’ 2-1 victory over the Lighting to open up the Eastern Conference Final set off a virtual tempest in a teapot complaining about how the Rangers were taking all the joy out of hockey.

The next four games in that serious finished up with scores of 6-2, 6-5, 5-1, and 7-3 respectively.

Rumours of the puck’s demise were greatly exaggerated, apparently.

But hey, when life proves your narratives completely and utterly false gives you lemons, ignore it and find something else to talk about make lemonade.

And so the narrative shifted. Now it was about whether or not Henrik Lundqvist should start game 4 after giving up 12 goals in the previous two games. The Rangers, of course, went on to win the game 5-1 thanks in large part to a strong performance from Lundqvist, who stopped 38 of 39 shots, good for a 0.974 save percentage.

This, could only mean one thing: time to quickly pivot the narrative to focus on Ben Bishop, who by now had given up 10 goals over the previous two games. And, as we all know, Bishop started anyway and pitched at 2-0 shutout

But if you missed that bus, don’t worry. I came back around after game six:

Good job. Good effort.

This is the beauty of a sports writing gig. Once you have the job, it’s like having a bus pass. All you need to know is where you want to go and which narrative will get you there.

That being said, you should probably put a little more effort into it than Mike Sieleski of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who leaned a little too heavily on the “culture change” narrative in his piece on the hiring of Dave Hakstol as the Flyers’ new head coach:

Now that’s what I call driving a point home.

As for me, I haven’t seen this much talk about culture change since the last time I tried to find a new brand of yogurt:

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