Some lessons are best learned by losing

The atmosphere at these tournaments is always a blast, and it’s even better when there’s a local team in a final as was the case last Dec. 30 as the Cougars fell to the Anjou Coyotes about as exciting a game as can happen at that level.

I’ll admit that we’re all “homers� in the local media, so I wasn’t ashamed to cheer whenever NDG scored.

Standing in the booth with the tournament organizers and a delicious spread of party sandwiches, cheese and crackers, I had an interesting perspective on the game – especially since co-organizer Lisa Dawes was jumping around frantically as her son Nicholas’s team fought to stay in the game.

It’s hard not to pull for a team when a) it’s local, playing against a visitor in its own tournament final, and b) one of its defenceman’s mothers is standing right in front of you.

So I got to cheering for the Cougars and I felt genuinely bad for the players, parents and coaches when Anjou’s Detroyt Pereira beat NDG’s Mark Osis on a breakaway in overtime to seal the deal for the visitors.

After giving it a little, though, I actually don’t feel bad at all.

A tournament loss like that will do nothing but build character for this crew of aspiring hockey stars and will only help them be better in the future.

I think back to my own experience as a peewee in my first tournament in St. Hubert, circa 1993-94.

It was my first year playing A-level hockey and my first tournament.

From the sign-in process to having our bags delivered to the room, I was blown away by the whole show.

Put that together with the music playing at each stop in the action and the orange slices between periods as the Zamboni cleaned the ice during the second intermission and we had an all-out professional show.

I think we lost the first game, and won the second in a shootout before we were eliminated in the third game of the double-knockout tournament.

Two things from that tournament really stuck with me:

The first was the ecstasy of winning the Game 2 shootout. Shootouts are intense for anyone, but even more so for a goalie. I think that was my first experience really stepping up in a clutch game and making a difference.

The second was the down of losing.

That was probably the first time I had ever lost anything important in hockey and it stung. My teammates and I learned even more about losing in the playoffs that year as we lost in the semifinal despite having the best record in the league.

What we learned is that losing sucks, but it really isn’t the end of the world. That’s the lesson these kids will pull away from their tournament experience.

The game isn’t everything, but as long as you play your hardest all the time, winning and losing isn’t everything either.