This week has been a complete Canadian freakout. Wednesday was the Arar, Canadian folk hero thing. Tuesday was the 25th anniversary of Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the patriation of Canada’s constitution—a big… no, a huge deal. And then this coming Monday will be the 110th anniversary of the birth of legendary Canadian Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Pearson was once just the name of an airport to me, but now I’ll be damned if this Mike guy wasn’t responsible for just about everything that’s come to mean “Canada” to the world: the maple leaf flag, universal healthcare, official biligualism, and the Auto Pact.

But all of that is a trifle next to what has suddenly infected every minute of Canadian life: the playoffs. My God.

My God!! When I arrived here, I was surprised at how big of a deal hockey was. And I had expected hockey to be a big deal. Then, the NHL season started. Games were covered regularly on the official national television network. Hockey scores led newscasts. When more than half of the Canadian NHL teams were playing in a single night, HNIC would go completely fucking insane. And then there was Hockey Day. And the five dollar bill. And Hockey: A People’s History—where in documentary after documentary, the CBC explained how hockey is the central basis and metaphor for Canadian life.

The playoffs have changed all that. Canada is no longer going apeshit over hockey. It has pushed far outside of the apeshit envelope and plunged into a minute-by-minute maniac obsession that I’m confident nobody in my blasé, cynical America has ever approached. The nightly news and, indeed, all non-hockey programming is now long gone from the CBC, in prime time. TSN, the Canadian ESPN, has launched a war room for keeping its vigil on the tournament. If something drastic happens, like, say, a shooting rampage, the CBC just commandeers other TV channels so that the hockey coverage doesn’t flag. I have heard four-year-old girls offering studied game analysis, while walking to school, that would go way over the head of the highest paid professional hockey pundits in the States. Club meetings and volunteer events have all wound down until the end of playoff season. Hell, nobody even ever says “Stanley Cup playoffs” or “NHL playoffs.”

It’s just “the playoffs.” Only fools and tourists wouldn’t know what you were talking about. They do not speak the same language here. They speak hockey.