Many Canadians had faith in the Canadiens this year, as they were the only home-based team that made it to the playoffs. It’s no secret that I’m an avid fan of the Habs, so of course I found their loss this year particularly heartbreaking, given all that they had been through to make it that far. The team obviously knows where their weak points are and what they need to improve for next year. With the Habs learning lessons from their tough games, I also picked up on a few business related lessons while watching them play game six:

Stay Calm During the Unexpected – There’s no doubt that losing Carey Price to a knee injury had a massive impact on the Canadiens. While naysayers will argue from watching the series that they didn’t lose because of goaltending, it’s still a mental blow to the team. It was extremely difficult to predict they wouldn’t have their gold medal goalie in the game, but it goes to show that you can’t always expect things to go smoothly. The unexpected will happen – be it your company’s internet going down, a key presenter being suddenly called away or even dangerous weather preventing you from making an important business trip. You need to always have some sort of contingency plan, or at the very least, stay calm under the pressure of the unexpected.

Sometimes Your Best Won’t Cut It – I, along with many other people, believed that once the Habs conquered the Bruins, the cup was theirs. While the Rangers aren’t a pushover by any means, I assumed that by sweeping the first round and fiercely battling through their grudge match with Boston that they had built a solid momentum that would take them to the finals. They clearly tried their absolute best, but sometimes your best just isn’t enough. This is an invaluable lesson to learn when you’re an entrepreneur. Your pitch to a new client may have been the best you could do, but your best won’t always take you to the top, for various uncontrollable reasons. This doesn’t mean you should give up – far from it in fact, which leads to my next point…

Failure Makes You Improve – Montreal players have already said they were proud of their team and vowed that better days were ahead, which is nice to hear after a defeat. You need to have the same mentality when things don’t go your way as well.  It’s difficult to see your absolute best efforts crushed right in front of you. There are many people I know who latched onto a promising opportunity and gave it their all, only to be rejected and then they essentially gave up after that one experience. Don’t let failure stop you on your way to greatness. Everyone has failed in their life, multiple times, be it professionally or personally. As cliché as it sounds, you can’t let one failure crush your dreams. If everyone gave up on their dreams after one setback, the world would be a much different place.

You can learn many valuable business lessons in almost anything, be it sports teams or movies or anything in between. What are some of the most unexpected places that you’ve learned valuable lessons?