OK, so that didn't go so well but the milkshakes were good

The last time I saw a kids' team implode into the depths of dismal was when my son was playing major peewee AE.
Thinking we had swagger, we entered the team in an OMHA 'B' tournament in Aylmer, about 45 minutes away.
We should have known it would be an odd weekend from the way it started.
The first round robin game was at 7 am, bright and early for even pre-teens, and it was against a minor peewee AE team from neighbouring Oakridge. Younger kids. Should've been a win. We knew it might not be just based on the tone of the kids when they arrived. We didn't count on getting thoroughly trampled by younger players who came to compete.
So dismal was the effort from a lack of backchecking to any sense of team play that the head coach decided to use Game 2 to make a statement. Everyone who was usually a forward played defence. Everyone who was a defenceman played forward. Fortunately, he didn't relocate the goalies.
That game had a predictable outcome, even though everyone went back to their familiar positions for the third period.
Game 3 of the round robin found the coach absent with a self-inflicted flu and a befuddled group of West London kids smoked by the host team.
Amid it all was an attempt at a team meal where the manager arranged a discount at one restaurant while the grandmother of a player thought she'd make arrangements at another. The kids who showed up at the right team meal laced their meals with multiple orders of milkshakes, with predictable results.
The tournament was early in the season and the team did start clicking and had some success later.
So confident were we that we arranged an exhibition game late in the season against the same Aylmer team with which we were not competitive during the tournament, just to prove how far we had progressed.
Smoked again.