David Kirouac-Imagn Images
Many sports teams have had to deal with a rough period that can be traced back to a supposed curse that’s responsible. One Senators fan has caught some heat over a playoff anthem that was released before Ottawa fell into a 2-0 hole in its first-round showdown with the Hurricanes, and the franchise paid to fly him to the other side of the globe in the hopes of ridding itself of his bad juju.
Sports have a tendency to make even the most logical and reasonable people gravitate toward some objectively irrational behavior and beliefs.
That includes the notion that a team can be burdened by a curse due to negative karma that was released into the universe. Multiple generations of Red Sox and Cubs fans spent decades blaming Babe Ruth and a billy goat, respectively, for World Series droughts that spanned 86 years in Boston and more than a century in Chicago, but those are far from the only fan bases that have grappled with some sort of jinx.
In 2017, the Maple Leafs repaid Larry Hillman the $2,400 he was fined (plus interest) over a contract dispute in the wake of the 1967 season in an attempt to lift the hex the defenseman subsequently placed on a franchise that has not won another Stanley Cup since that year.
The Senators, on the other hand, are still in search of their first-ever championship, and they’ve exiled one fan who has been accused of hindering that quest with his cringeworthy music.
The Senators flew a fan named Kyle Ivan to Taiwan to try to lift a curse linked to a playoff anthem he recorded
Last season, the Senators snapped a seven-year playoff drought, and an Ottawa-based musician named Kyle Ivan celebrated the occasion by heading to the Canadian Tire Centre to perform an anti-Maple Leafs anthem inspired by Blur’s “Song 2.”
It garnered plenty of attention online for all of the wrong reasons, and his prophecy of “Toronto’s going down” did not come true in a series where they won in six games.
This season, the Sens returned to the playoffs for the second straight year, and prior to the start of their series with the Hurricanes, Ivan returned to the arena to film a new song inspired by Eminem’s “Without Me.”
Things have once again failed to go in Ottawa’s favor, as Carolina has pulled out to a 2-0 lead in the series and will have the chance to extend it to three games on Thursday night.
Plenty of fans have blamed Ivan for cursing the team with yet another song that seems poised to age poorly, and the team has decided to take some action.
On Wednesday, the Senators posted a clip of Ivan standing on a street in Taiwan where he explained the team had decided to send him “as far away from the Canadian Tire Centre as possible” ahead of Game 3 and for the remainder of the series.
You’re welcome Sens fans. pic.twitter.com/gyQ5NBNFHt
— x – Ottawa Senators (@Senators) April 23, 2026
If the team had really wanted to send him as far away from the arena as possible, it would have shipped him off to a spot in the middle of the ocean between the southwest coast of Australia and the Kerguelen Islands north of Antarctica, but having him nearly 7,500 miles away in Asia seems like a pretty solid compromise.
Well played.