Professional athletes have rather interesting rituals, which have long been documented and discussed throughout the years. Fans that follow professional hockey at any level of play seem to take their rituals and superstitions to a completely different realm. We hold firm to the idea that our choices will have a direct and lasting impact on how well, and perhaps how badly, our beloved teams fare when playing the game, one we all love.
Should your team win and continue to do so, it is hard to argue against this ritualistic behavior, but what happens when they don’t? Wayne Gretzky perhaps summed it up best when he said, “Hockey is a unique sport in the sense that you need each and every guy to help each other and pulling in the same direction to be successful.” Now the Great One may not have been speaking about fans and their superstitions, but we believe that fans are just doing their part to help pull their team in the same direction where they can. We wear the jersey on a certain day, our team wins, and we wear that jersey for every game after that. It all makes perfect sense, right? If they lose, we find a way that we can hit the reset button.
You will never hear me argue against this. During the 2016 season, a friend of mine gifted me a Mario Lemieux (#66) Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. It was honestly the first one I ever owned. My superstition began when I put the jersey on just as the puck dropped against the Rangers, which was just days after my birthday. The Penguins won that game 5-2. When the Penguins made the playoffs that season, I wore it for every game until we won the Stanley Cup. This ritual even was still in play when I attended a wedding in Virginia and wore that jersey on the beach in the scorching hot sun because the game had begun and that puck dropped. Two straight cup-winning seasons and several seasons later, my ritual remains active when it comes to jersey #66 and a Championship run.
Now that Lord Stanley’s cup has been raised by the Vegas Golden Knights, it is a good time to look back at some other fan-held superstitions shared from this season. Michael R., a longtime fan of the ECHL team, the Atlanta Gladiators, has had his fair share of them. He said that his ritual includes a favorite Gladiators tee shirt layered over a long-sleeve tee and then topped off with his favorite jersey with “Blind Ref” named on the back. Michael always drives the same route to and from the stadium and parks in the same spot. Another Gladiator fan, Pete K., has a lucky spot to park in at the stadium but ran into an issue when that spot was taken. That game ended up with a Gladiators loss. Like Michael, I had my “lucky spot” for the Atlanta Gladiators. I had to sit it in a certain section when I attended alone, and I had to make it in time to see the warmups. Michael added when he asked if this “nonsense actually works,” he answered with a resounding “YES!”.
Here are a few other fun fan rituals and superstitions:
Kristen S. – “I don’t like to put on my jersey until I’ve seen the ice.”
Kermit P. – “Wear the same sweater to the next game after a win.”
Andrew G. – “Never use the word shutout until the final horn.”
Jessie B. on wearing her Pittsburgh Penguins pendant – “I wear this pendant from the first day of the playoffs until we win the cup or are eliminated.”
Debra D. – I [must] sleep with two of my Penguins throws facing a certain way with the tags on my right side.”
Dan M. – “Always watch ‘Slap Shot’ before the first game every year.”
A favorite submission on fan superstitions was courtesy of Alexis G., a Pittsburgh Penguins fan who remarked that her boyfriend, Tommy P., a current SPHL broadcaster has several of them. One of them, however, had garnered him some social media attention. She told us how Tommy had Wendy’s chicken nuggets before a game that he was covering that the team went on to win. He did the same for the next game, and they won again. The team would later go on a long winning streak after that, all after Tommy had his pre-game nuggets. His ritual became so popular on Twitter that other teams began to tweet him back and asked him to “Please stop eating those chicken nuggets!”.
As much as we hate the end of a season, it is also a perfect time for fans to put their rituals from the year to rest. Please know that as I write this know that all my Pittsburgh Penguins jerseys are hung in order based on the lineup for the Penguins as they head onto the ice, which all have been to Pittsburgh with me to be worn at home at least once. My signed Atlanta Gladiators Bode Wilde jersey (#8) and team-signed jersey from the Atlanta Gladiators remain next to them until the season begins in October. After all, one never tempts the hockey gods. I am not going to say that your team will lose next year if you do not continue to read Inside the Rink. However, are you ready to take that chance?
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