During the second period of Game 2 of the Toronto-New Jersey Eastern Conference semifinal on Saturday, Leafs defenseman Cory Cross took down Devils center Bobby Holik. Cross stood over the fallen Holik and drilled him in the back about six times with his stick. They don’t call him Cory Cross-check for nothing.

The 6’4, 230 lb. center from the Czech republic immediately stood up, snarled-and smiled. Holik had drawn a double-minor for his patience, and he probably didn’t even notice the indentation in his pads.

Welcome to the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Every April, the NHL commences the fiercest championship tournament in all of professional sports. Game in and game out players repeatedly put their bodies on the line for sixty minutes—and usually beyond—in order to gain the most marginal of advantages to advance their team to the next round.

The rough and tumble play instantly creates rivalries and hatreds that don’t readily fade away once the final whistle blows and the teams line-up for the ceremonial post series handshake.

The Devils have been in the center of controversy, and the defending Stanley Cup champions can now count among the teams that hate their guts the normal regional rivals like the Philadelphia Flyers and the New York Rangers, and new playoff rivals like the Carolina Hurricanes and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Carolina-New Jersey? You bet after Devils captain Scott Stevens leveled star rookie Shane Willis and the Canes’ revered captain Ron Francis with solid, clean hits. Both players left the series with concussions. The look in Stevens’ eye afterwards was the same one he gave Red Wing Dino Ciccarelli in the 1995 Stanley Cup Finals after he ended Viktor Kozlov and said, “You’re next.”

Hurricanes fans responded with a cute little chant about Stevens that Ranger fans still do after the trumpet blast about Islander legend Dennis Potvin.