Taylor Swift is the Los Angeles Kings' Anti-Hero

01:15 PM EST
04.28.2023
3
min - read
Luiza Vidal
01:15 PM EST
04.28.2023
3
min - read

The Taylor Swift Kings Curse

As Taylor Swift starts her new tour, The Eras Tour, celebrating her career accomplishments, new stories about Swift come to the surface. She has traveled all over the world with her theatrical tours, big stages and amazing performances that sell out in minutes. There is, however, a funny story where the Los Angeles Kings and the loved-by-all artist intertwined their destinies - and it didn't end well for the Kings.
We go back to August all the time

Back in 2015, Swift was traveling the world with the 1989 World Tour, which sold out in every location she went to, including the Staples Center, Los Angeles’ home rink. Swift played the arena on August 22, 2015, and was surprised by Kobe Bryant himself to raise a banner celebrating her record-setting 16 sold-out shows in the arena. As the banner was raised, the crowd went wild and the moment became a fond memory for everyone at the show. That’s until the Kings started losing.

The curse begins like snow on the beach

After the banner was up, the NHL team had a great season. They had a 48-28-6 record and 102 points, finishing the year second in the Pacific Division. Los Angeles made the playoffs and… lost all three of their home games, getting eliminated in five games in the first round. Then, the following year they didn't make the playoffs. In 2017-18 they lost in the first round and in 2018-19 the Kings didn't make it again.

Kings fans all over Twitter started asking for Taylor Swift’s banner to be taken down because the team was now cursed. Fans firmly believed it was the homage's fault for their team being bad - and honestly, with how superstitious hockey players are, no one would doubt if the team believed it as well. Chaos followed and the team, fearing another bad season, made a decision to cover up the banner during home games. Since the arena is shared, they couldn't take it down completely but covering up Swift’s banner worked…for one game.

The Swift Curse is lifted

On October 5, 2019, the Kings won their season opener for the 2019-20 season, a 7-4 drubbing of the Nashville Predators. That was enough for everyone to go wild on Twitter once again, celebrating that removing the banner had worked.

The celebration, however, was quickly ruined by a loss against the Vegas Golden Knights the following day. Still, Kings fans were convinced the banner was a curse and they had broken it. A few months later the entire world went into quarantine due to a highly deadly virus that kept us without our loved ones and hockey, and effectively ended the conversation of Taylor Swift’s curse on the Los Angeles Kings.

Maybe the banner wasn't all that bad in the end.

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