My Control Over The Predators Is Slipping!

In my post entitled "My Plan Is Working Perfectly", I mentioned my unbroken streak of only paying attention to Losing Predators games. Every game I followed, they lost, every game I ignored, they won. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in action. Coming up, at the time was a match-up against the Detroit Red Wings, which I wanted to , but didn't want to jinx*.

Well, I Followed along on the Radio for the first Period, and the first few minutes of the second. I abandoned the game to spend time with my wife, and we watched a movie. When the movie was done, I checked online for the score, only to find there was no final score yet, because the game was still in overtime! Nashville didn't make it out of overtime the winner, but the way the NHL standings work, if you manage to not lose during "regulation" game time, you still get awarded a "point" in the overall league rankings. So a tie that you lose in overtime still counts as a tie for you in the broader picture.

So for my streak, that matched perfectly. I now had Three possible outcomes:

1. Pay No Attention, Win Outright.
   
2. Follow Closely, Lose Miserably.
3. Pay Some Attention, and Lose in Overtime, Scoring a Tie.

I paid absolutely no attention to the Next 3 games, in which we Beat Columbus at Home and Away, and also dispensed with the Chicago Blackhawks. The Streak continued unabated.

Then the other night, at work, I checked to see how the Preds had been doing lately, and what the schedule looked like, and was surprised to find a tied game still in progress! (Against the St.Louis Blues, one of the Preds' most hated division rivals, who this year bought Paul Kariya, one of Nashville's star players, out from under us. Some people I know are still very upset about that.) [Warning: Link Contains Mature Language (and Immature Attitude).]

I should have turned away right then. The game was tied, with just a couple of minutes to go. But I listened. I listened intently, as the game went to "sudden-death" overtime. I listened as the scoreless overtime period became a shootout. I listened with dread, as Paul Kariya took his turn as shooter, and in ecstasy as he failed to win the game for his new, deeper-pocketed team. And finally I listened as, again, we lost a game in overtime. The Streak Remained Unbroken.

Then last night, I got a newsflash that the Predators lost AGAIN to the Blues (this time in regulation play) on Monday.
NNOOOOOoooo!!

The Streak Was broken, but in the wrong direction!! I kept hoping to break the streak, but by observing a Win, not by letting a Loss slip by!

Silver Lining, Though: I can watch a game now without fear of The Jinx*.

*For a marginally related bit of info-cational edu-tainment, check out this video, which is the simplest, and best, layman's introduction to "Quantum Weirdness" in which The Act of Observing An Event Changes The Event's Outcome. See, It's not Superstition, it's Science!