Toronto Maple Leafs fans were sitting pretty for a while there, with games 1 and 2 of the round 2 series easily snagged by the team. With game 3, however, Florida has reclaimed some of that Stanley Cup glory, leaving the Leafs’ fans shocked and shaken off of their high horses. In a recent episode of Spittin’ Chiclets, TNT broadcaster Paul Bissonnette dons a Leafs hat as he discusses the superfan’s responsibilities in keeping a winning streak going.

“I’m turning into one of those fans now,” Bissonnette said to co-host and ex-Panthers defense man Ryan Whitney. “That if your team is playing good and you’re watching it from a certain location, I don’t wanna mess with the juju, the feng shui, from a fan standpoint, do you do that?” Forcing one to wonder what Bisonnette had been doing during those first two Leafs games in round 2 that he missed out on in game 3?

Whitney, who was wearing an Oilers cap in the podcast, responded in the affirmative, “I was going to watch the Oilers game in my basement. It’s a little more quiet, great couch down there, and what happened? I’m like, I can’t sit here; you got in my head. I think I’m a full-blown fan now!” He replied, adding, “We’re now full-blown Oilers-Leafs junkies in the middle of a war, trying to raise Lord Stanley, and I’m not going to do anything that’ll screw up my team. I’m not gonna do it.”

Perhaps, in round 2, the stakes get higher and the fans (and a certain TNT broadcaster) get a little delusional, but how far do fans go during the playoffs to maintain that good juju for their team?

It’s not just TNT broadcasters! Hockey traditions amongst fans can get real crazy

Of course, Paul Bissonnette and Ryan Whitney are not the first fans to discuss their over-the-top and all-consuming fan rituals; they are only joining a long list of super fans who somehow believe that the fate of their team lies single-handedly in the kind of socks they are wearing on game day or the volume level on the television!

The Detroit Red Wings famously have a fan tradition dating back to 1952, when a super fan, Pete and his brother Jerry Cusimano, who worked in Detroit’s Eastern Market, snuck an octopus onto the ice early on in Detroit’s series in the hopes that the eight legs would provide the team luck: one leg for each game of the series that they needed to win the cup that year. Then, as luck would have it, Detroit did win the cup, and the octopuses have never stopped!

The Panthers have a similar animal-themed tradition. It all originated because prior to a game in their 1995-1996 season playoff run, John Vanbiesbrouck saw Scott Mellanby kill a rat with his stick in the locker room and then proceed to score two goals with said stick! Ever since, thousands of plastic rats have showered down on Panthers games, so much so that in the off-season, NHL refs can penalize the home team if their fans disrupt the game.

So, as both TNT broadcaster Bissonnette and Whitney seem to agree, once you’re in the fan leagues, you’re in the full-blown fan leagues, and when your team is winning, you’re going to have to do everything you can to keep those energetic fields from shifting, even if it means holding your arm up in the same position as you did since the last goal!