San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle celebrates during Game 4 of the first-round playoff series between the Nashville and Vancouver.

-- Photo By George Walker Iv | Ap

In hockey’s regular season, it’s relatively rare for two teams to play consecutive games against each other. It happens, but it’s rare. And even when it does, it is just often just a two-game home-and-home type of series.

Two games can be enough to develop some animosity for an opponent, but in the playoffs with the best-of-seven format, the hatred can develop quickly and boil over to each successive game as the intensity increases.

The saying, “It’s not hockey, it’s playoff hockey,” is usually obvious from the opening faceoff once the postseason starts. The intensity, hitting and fierceness with which the players display every shift is different from the regular season. Of the 16 teams that qualify for the NHL playoffs, just one skates the Stanley Cup in victory in mid-June, so players will do and give everything they can to be on that team.

As a series progresses the number of games remaining dwindle and one team is closer to their summer break starting, so just by definition, the intensity of the hockey ramps up.

“The pressure enhances each game,” Predators center Ryan O’Reilly says. “It gets tighter and tighter out there.”

In hockey, except after a team has iced the puck, the home team has the opportunity to make the last change before a faceoff. That gives the home team’s coach the ability to put who they want on the ice after seeing who the visitors send out for the faceoff.

Coaches often are looking to match forward lines and/or have a specific defensive pairing on the ice to give their team an advantage. That matching often leads players seeing the same opposing line or defensive pairing on the ice each time they are.

“That’s why series are so fun,” Predators defenseman Luke Schenn says. “It’s that battle in the corner that leads to the battle in front of the net that carries on to the next period, the next game. It all accumulates. That’s what makes playoff hockey so fun. It’s not a regular season where it’s a one-off and you move on to another team.”

Hockey players have long memories. They also are frequently doing their best to do whatever they can to get an opponent off their game. It might come in the form of a little extra force on a hit or a well-placed face wash with a sweaty and stinky glove after a whistle.

“Everybody is trying to get every advantage on the opposing team,” Predators defenseman Jeremy Lauzon says.

And the trash talking, oh the trash talking. Hockey players are famous for saying things they hope to get under their opponents’ collective skins. The chirps as they are often called, are usually brief, but cutting barbs that hopefully goad an opponent into becoming distracted or even take a retaliatory penalty.

This isn’t just a playoff thing. Hockey players are good for fun, albeit usually adult-themed trash talk at all times.

During his time with the Predators, a hot microphone caught former defenseman P.K. Subban in an exchange with then-Colorado Avalanche defenseman Nikita Zadorov. After Zadorov questioned Subban’s manliness, the former Norris Trophy-winning Subban shot back with surgical-like precision, “I wouldn’t fight you, but you’re a terrible hockey player.”

Quick, but simple and to the point from Subban, long regarded as one of the best talkers in the game during his playing career. Now retired as a player, he’s transitioned the on-ice talk into a broadcasting role with ESPN.

Zadorov, now with the Vancouver Canucks, Nashville’s first round playoff opponent, embraces being a playoff villain. And it’s not just his opponents in the opposing sweaters that he enjoys taking on, he revels in having an entire arena see him as an enemy when he plays in road buildings like Bridgestone Arena. He even feeds off it.

“It’s cool when everybody hates you when you are on the ice,” Zadorov says. “(When) they are booing you and are against you, it probably gets me going even more to play on the road than at home. I’m enjoying both energies.”

As one of the Predators who already has his name on the Stanley Cup, Schenn has gone the distance in the NHL playoffs.

“It’s head-to-head for however many games it takes,” Schenn says. “I love it.”

It truly is the most wonderful time of the year. And one of the special things about hockey is the tradition of teams shaking hands at the end of the series, theoretically burying the hatchet of all of the hits, facewashes, and verbal attacks that have been lobbed each way over the course of the up to seven games.