It�s NHL playoff time again, which always makes me nostalgic for Hawaii.

What on earth do ice hockey and Hawaii have in common? you might well ask. For me, it�s actually quite a lot.

Some of my favourite hockey viewing experiences have been in hibiscus patterned hotel rooms or sitting by the pool having a drink and watching the TV over the bar. Watching play-off games on the edge of my seat even though my team, the hapless LA Kings, have been nowhere near the ice.

While I am a general sports nut (as a spectator rather than a participant, I must add), I never really had any awareness of ice hockey other than as an excuse to have a fist fight before I moved to LA. And I probably wouldn�t have got into it even then but for the fact that I happened to live in LA during the season that Wayne Gretzsky took the Kings to the Stanley Cup finals. Although they wound up loosing, they had me sufficiently hooked that I came home wearing a Kings cap and raving about what an edge of your seat thrill hockey was to watch.

Although I didn�t get to watch too many games over the next few years - neither the internet or cable TV were really around when I first got home - I still paid enough attention and talked about it enough that several years later when Smurfette, Nathan and I went to Hawaii during the playoffs, Mr Nathan, my fellow general sports nut, was anxious to watch a game or two.

He was hooked almost immediately. And then two things happened to further seal his love of the sport. First, he broke a bone in his foot and was holed up in the hotel room for a day with a ice pack on his foot while Smurfette and I took the opportunity to spend a whole day shopping without Nathan complaining about being dragged around behind us. He spent the entire day watching play-off games and starting to develop an affinity for the Pittsburgh Penguins that in recent years I have come to relish because they�re even more hapless than my Kings.

And then there was the seven overtime match between the Penguins and the Flyers.

We had come back from a day of touristy activity, perhaps Pearl Harbour. The game was already well into the third period, and we sat down in the room to watch a bit of the game and have a couple of beers while Nathan iced his foot before we went out to dinner. Smurfette was reading a book in the corner. When the game went into overtime we started down that dangerous path of �they�re into overtime, we�ll go to dinner when it finishes, won�t be long now.�

It was perhaps the third or fourth overtime before our stomachs overcame our interest in the game - by this point even Smurfette was involved - and we headed out to dinner. We expected to return to a final score being discussed on Sports Center. Instead we returned to a game that was still going on. It was late at night in Hawaii, it was extremely late at night in Pennsylvania. To this day we still reminisce about the seven overtime game.

By that point in time we of course had access to scores over the internet and matches on cable. They don�t show a lot of matches even on cable during the regular season, but they do show most of the playoff games. So when playoff season comes around Nathan and I rev up for fitting hockey into our viewing schedule between football matches, Premier league and other miscellaneous sport.

Last year we had watched a few matches already when I headed off to Hawaii, this time by myself. And again I found myself heading out during the day, to active volcanos, or rain forests, or shopping centres, and returning to the hotel in the late afternoon to sit by the pool sipping a drink and watching the playoffs at the ubiquitous TV over the bar. Generally a hockey match on one screen and a basketball playoff game on the other. Following the underdog success of the Ducks and holding my breath each time the puck went near the goals during Giguere�s shutout streak.

So now playoff season is on us again, and Nathan and I are setting our viewing schedule even though, as usual, our teams are nowhere near the action.

And I�m starting to feel like I should be sitting, surrounded by hibiscus, sipping an alcoholic beverage and putting off going to dinner until the game is over.