The playoffs are what it’s all about in sports, but which are the best?

It’s a bummer for Boston sports fans that TD Garden is no longer playing a postseason soundtrack, with the Bruins bowing out after just one round of the playoffs and the Celtics suffering a similar fate in their first round.

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The home teams were sent home early, but in the busiest playoff overlap on the calendar, the NHL and NBA go on, a near-nightly offering of games providing constant reminders not simply of what we’re missing, but why it hurts so much to be on the outside looking in. The playoffs are what it’s all about. The second season. The tournament. The chance to win a title.

All of which led me to revisiting an age-old sports debate: Which of the major sports has the best playoffs? From seven-game series to sudden-death shootouts, from starting pitchers to red-hot goalies, from miracle catches to lockdown defenses, the playoffs highlight them all in unique and memorable ways.

But as I begin to contemplate my answer, I offer one more question: In the catalogue of sporting sounds, is there anything that compares to playoff hockey?

So good they gave it its own name.

“The regular reason if you’re in the building, it’s fabulous, the speed, skill, emotion, intensity involved. But when the playoffs hit, all of those factors get ratcheted up. It’s a fever pitch,” said Judd Sirott, NESN’s Bruins play-by-play announcer. “The nerves, the hostility, it’s something you can feel. Add in the crowd, at a place like TD Garden in Boston, every big hit, every missed pass, you feel it in the building. You can feel the intensity and drama. It’s so good.”

No. 1. The best, cemented for me in Game 7 against Florida in 2023. The Presidents’ Trophy-winning Bruins were shockingly bounced out of the first round, but the way the building felt across the third period and overtime prompted me to write at the time: “Such is the unique frequency of a hockey crowd, its sound raining from the highest rafters until settling, like a blanket, atop the ice, billowing and floating in waves crashing alternately from side to side, up and down, not simply swallowing those in its path, but carrying them along for the ensuing ride.”

As Sirott put it, “It almost feels like you can’t breathe until there’s an intermission. That’s what makes the game so great.”

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And so hard. The journey to the Stanley Cup is the most arduous of all sports. Teams need 16 wins across four grueling best-of-seven rounds, facing a potential 28 extra games, or nearly one-third of the 82 they played in the regular season. Overtimes have no time limit, and the jangling nerves apply equally to the PWHL (sorry Boston Fleet, OT got you, too), and the Olympics (thanks Team USA and Canada for so many amazing memories). Combine it all with an incredibly fast-paced, jarringly physical sport, and you get “playoff hockey,” the best of them all.

In descending order, here are arguments for others:

No. 2: The NCAA Tournament. March Madness is as good a two-word phrase as we have in sports, right up there with Game 7. The commonality? Do-or-die stakes that can’t be replicated in a regular season. Though the NCAA insists on diluting this most magical formula, even the possibility of a Cinderella run like the best one ever — North Carolina State in 1983 — ignites our imaginations to delicious levels. From the men/women dominance of a place such as UConn to the years when a Duke/North Carolina rivalry could start fires, the added level of rooting for your school (not to mention the lure of bracket challenges) keep March great.

No. 3: The NFL. I’ve always felt that conference championship Sunday might be the best sports day of the year, and that’s without taking the NFL’s ever-soaring popularity into account. Sure, the Super Bowl is a worldwide phenomenon, a spectacle of monumental proportions. But we all know the game itself often falls flat. It’s what leads up to it that resonates with so much intensity, win-or-go-home stakes weighing so heavily on each game. One big play or one big mistake (think pick-6, strip-sack, or 70-yard bomb) can make all the difference.

No. 4: Major League Baseball. This feels unfair given the 2025 playoffs, among the best of all time, including a most memorable World Series Game 7. If playoff hockey feels like a whole new season, and playoff football like instant snapshots, the baseball playoffs are like the final chapter in a season-long story, rewarding teams that survived the marathon. There’s still the thread of every pitch meaning more, but the rhythm of the game, the lack of any time limit, ensures that baseball remains unique.

No. 5: The NBA. Nowhere are playoffs built more around individual personalities than in the NBA, where star power doesn’t just draw ratings, but determines legacies and reputations. Even as the playoffs go on, stories of who’s going where in the offseason (where will Giannis Antetokounmpo end up? Could Jaylen Brown really get traded?) can overshadow the action, which for me pushes it down the list.

No. 6: World Cup/MLS/NWSL. Penalty-kick shootouts take plenty of well-deserved criticism for the way they boil the beautiful game down to one, narrow aspect. But when all else fails, when all the dribbling, passing, bending, and bicycle kicking fails to produce a goal, when players are ready to collapse from the exhaustion of running for almost two hours, the dramatic, nerve-jangling finish works. Just ask Brandi Chastain.

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