Pictured Above: Lightning captain Steven Stamkos is still recovering from an undisclosed lower-body injury, and has yet to play a single game during the 2020 playoffs.
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
By Patrick Tobin
For most of the year, I’m not much of a superstitious person. I love black cats, I’m a firm believer that astrology is a scam and – except for one potential encounter with a guitar-playing ghost – I don’t believe in the supernatural.
But once the NHL playoffs roll around, all of that goes out the window. Hockey, like most sports, is filled with bizarre rituals and superstitions (Google “Detroit Red Wings octopus”). While some are universally held or popular among teams and fan bases, the most important superstitions are those that only you understand.
Take last year’s playoffs, for example.
Over the course of four excruciating back-to-back losses to the Columbus Blue Jackets, I exhausted every single superstition I hold near and dear. I was forced to improvise. I didn’t watch a single game in the same place for fear I was the reason the Tampa Bay Lightning were losing.
I watched at home, at restaurants, at work, by myself, with other people, with different people. The jersey came on, off, on again, back off, maybe a t-shirt instead – nope, that didn’t work – how about nothing. I would sit down, lay down, stand up, lean on a table, not watch at all, watch on my computer, maybe the TV– still nothing.
Did any of it make sense? Not at all. Do I still practice those superstitions today? Religiously.
But the mother of all superstitions, at least for me, is that you can never, ever, ever, ever, predict that something good will happen. Expect the worst and hope for the best. But most importantly, expect the worst. While you’re at it, don’t even acknowledge that anything good has ever happened at all. Even better, just don’t bother talking about it.
Enter me, last week, foolishly volunteering to write a column about the Lightning’s playoff prospects in the Eastern Conference Finals. I’ll admit, I did not initially consider this issue.
The last time I wrote about the Lightning it was at the beginning of this season. At that point, I was still a hopeless shell of a human being recovering from one of the most embarrassing upsets in the history of sports. I wasn’t concerned with superstition, I just didn’t want to be made fun of by 12-year-old boys in the comment sections of every single NHL Instagram post.
The only way I’ve found out of this precarious situation is to do two things.
Step one: Run down the figurative clock of this column by filling it with lengthy anecdotes about my superstitions and anxieties rather than making any actual, meaningful predictions. Step two: Flood the universe with negative energy and hope that the universe spites me, in turn producing positive results. Considering I have already completed step one, it’s time for step two.
The Lightning are going to choke. Sure, they haven’t been entirely unsuccessful thus far but that doesn’t mean anything. They were a similar amount of not entirely unsuccessful at this point in the 2015, 2016 and 2018 playoffs, but that didn’t stop them from choking every single one of those years. It’s just how it goes.
And yes, maybe I should have a little bit more trust in this team – after all, they’ve grown so much or something like that. But when it comes to hockey, the second you get comfortable, something is bound to go horribly wrong. Lightning fans should know this better than most.
So, there you have it: a depressing, overly pessimistic and arguably pointless prediction for the Lightning’s 2020 playoff run. In true 2020 fashion, it was probably far too depressing and far too pessimistic and definitely pointless, but when it comes to superstition you can never be too safe.
Universe, the ball is in your court.
