An Ottawa-based musician has gone viral since the
Ottawa Senators
sent him to Taipei for the
National Hockey League
playoffs for releasing parody music that fans claimed “cursed the team.”
Kyle Ivan didn’t expect to go even more viral than he did in 2025 for a Sens-based parody of Eminem’s Without Me.
Beyond that, he didn’t expect to be banished to Taiwan ahead of the team’s
third playoff game
of the 2026 Stanley Cup playoffs. That came after many comments online accused Ivan of putting a hex on the team, resulting in its first- and
second-game
losses against the Carolina Hurricanes.
“The Sens reached out to me, and I think they wanted to play into it a bit. So we brainstormed some kind of idea, some kind of apology statement,” Ivan said. “After all was said and done, we landed on banishing me to Taiwan, as far away from the (Canadian Tire Centre) as possible.”
Ivan went viral on X on Thursday morning after the official Ottawa Senators account posted a video of him delivering an apology from the streets of Taipei, captioned “You’re welcome, Sens fans.”
You’re welcome Sens fans. pic.twitter.com/gyQ5NBNFHt
— x – Ottawa Senators (@Senators) April 23, 2026
The video racked up more than 10,000 likes on the platform. One comment saying, “Banishing a fan to Taiwan because he jinxed your team in the playoffs is the absolute funniest thing a professional sports organization has ever done and I don’t think it’s particularly close,” had nearly 30,000 likes as of Thursday afternoon.
Ivan has done a parody song for the Sens all four times they’ve qualified the playoffs in the past 12 years: 2015, 2017, 2025 and 2026.
“It started off in 2015. They were down three-nothing in their series (against the Montreal Canadiens), and I decided to just grab my guitar and make a little song to inspire them to do the impossible and come back from a three-nothing deficit,” Ivan said. “They won two games after I made the song, but didn’t end up coming out with a win.”
Ivan released his latest parody last week, before the
series
against the Hurricanes began, singing and dancing outside the Canadian Tire Centre in a bright red jersey and right in front of the building’s iconic LED sign spelling out Senators.
“Guess who’s back, back again,” Ivan lip-synced. “Sens are back, pesky Sens.”
A week later, after facing the playoff-induced online backlash, he was going to have to be up at 7 a.m. on Friday to watch the game on a Taipei television screen.
“At the end of the day, the important thing is that the fan base shows some passion and gets riled up for this team. And, if them uniting in hate is one way that gets them riled up and I have to be the target of that united front, then so be it,” Ivan said. “But I think, if you’re going to have that much energy on hating my stuff, at least turn it into something passionate.
“Go to the game and be as loud as you ever have been. Wear the craziest costumes, you know, come up with crazy new chants, be as loud as possible.”
And, Ivan added, “No one can be as cringe as I have, so you’re free to be as cringe as you want because you can’t top me this year. So you can get away with anything.”
Mayor Mark Sutcliffe also took to social media to thank Ivan for his sacrificial distancing. “On behalf of the people of Ottawa, thank you, Kyle,” Sutcliffe posted.
On behalf of the people of Ottawa, thank you Kyle.
Au nom des habitants d’Ottawa, merci Kyle. https://t.co/iq2VhmhCAb
— Mark Sutcliffe (@_MarkSutcliffe) April 23, 2026
Ivan said he hadn’t seen the mayor’s gratitude coming. “The video came out and it had its run, and it was pretty big in the hockey world, (but) I didn’t think this was gonna take a new toll, like a new level of virality. Even this latest apology thing that we collaborated with the Sens on, it seems like it’s going to be way bigger.”
But, Ivan said, at this point he’s “done all he can” to put the team in a good spot by ensuring his spectating comes from far, far away.
“If things don’t go well at this point, someone else better pick up the weight. I’m doing all that I can here, maybe aside from Linus Ullmark,” Ivan said. “On the other side, if it works, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of people who want me to stay here indefinitely. So it’s, you know, I’m still somehow in a lose, lose situation, but hopefully we’re at least having fun now.”
Ivan is a musician beyond just the Sens parodies, and his goal is to “get back on that horse.”
“There’s been a lot of hope for me to get back into releasing some new music that I want to put out in the near future. And so far that’s only amounted to Sens parodies in recent times,” Ivan said. “The goal is to put up music that hopefully people will find less cringe.”
He said he hoped that, if the Senators rally to win the best-of-seven series against the Hurricanes, he gets a bit of credit.
“I read a lot of what’s online, and some people are still really coming after me, even after all this, and some of it’s a little too far, in my opinion,” Ivan said. “But I love everyone that’s playing into the joke right now. I think it makes it very entertaining. It’s not exactly what I pictured when making a hype video, but I think in a weird, crazy, roundabout way we’ve built a lot of hype in the city.”
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