If you’re Canadian, something horrible happened on Wednesday. Our national junior hockey team blew a three goal lead to give up the gold medal in this year’s World Junior Hockey Championship — a tournament that pretty much only Canada and the players involved care about. It was a spectacular collapse. John Allemang examines the loss and how a hockey game can turn into a mind game.
Scientists don’t like talking about momentum because they find it hard to quantify. Yet when sports insiders talk about a momentum shift in a game, it’s as if they’re describing something visible, almost tangible.