Bergson: DeSouza Found New Hockey Home In Brandon
Article Courtesy Perry Bergson, Brandon Sun
Noah DeSouza may have a promising career as a life coach ahead of him.
His younger brother is Jackson DeSouza, a six-foot-five, 207-pound defenceman who the Brandon Wheat Kings acquired midway through the season.
A couple of months after he was traded to Wheat Kings, the younger DeSouza was unhappy with his play when Noah, who is three years out of junior, reminded him of the bigger picture and gave him some much-needed perspective.
“He said in five years no one is going to remember the score of the game or how you played,” DeSouza said. “You’re going to remember the memories you have with the boys, the bus trips, getting bag skated as a team, doing stupid stuff like watching movies, all the little things you don’t think you’ll remember.
“You don’t remember the games, so just enjoy it. It’s being able to look at it and say ‘I did everything I could in my junior career, I played through a lot of pain, I played through sickness and times I just didn’t want to do it, and I can genuinely say I put everything I could out there.
“The memories of junior hockey I have are amazing.”
DeSouza is from Erie, Colo., a community of 30,000 located north of Denver and east of Boulder. He didn’t know much about the WHL growing up. He was drafted by the Kelowna Rockets in the fourth round in 2018.
“I didn’t really know what to expect, I just wanted to experience what everybody was talking about and what junior hockey was about,” DeSouza said. “That’s what I wanted to experience and that’s why I wanted to go into the Western League more than college. I wanted to live the junior life that everyone was talking about. They said it’s the best years of your life.”
He played two games with the team at 15, two at 16 and then four at 17 due to the short Western Hockey League season in 2020-21 during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At least he got a great memory that year as the WHL decided if it was going to play.
Revelstoke Grizzlies general manager Ryan Parent invited the two DeSouza brothers to join the Kootenay International Junior Hockey League. They only got two games in, but they had a blast.
“That was the most fun I’ve ever had playing hockey in my life,” DeSouza said. “He’s always just been a really supportive guy and helped me out through my career so I’d like to thank him for sure.”
He became a full-time WHL player at 18 during the 2021-22 season. While he had age on his side, that didn’t make it any easier.
“It’s really tough,” DeSouza said. “When I came up in the Western League, I would get maybe three or four shifts a game and they were spaced out. Sometimes my first shift would be near the end of the first period. You’re coming in cold and you’re nervous already. If you miss a pass, coach isn’t going to put you back out there.”
He was fortunate to have a group of other young players in Kelowna to lean on, including Turner McMillen, John Babcock, Scott Cousins and Steel Quiring.
The longer he was in the league, the more effective DeSouza became, for what he considers a simple reason.
“Experience is everything,” DeSouza said. “You have to experience tight situations, you have to experience playing three in four and back to backs and getting up at five in the morning and playing that night. When you’re a younger guy it’s a lot tougher because you don’t know how to feel. You can’t gauge how you’re going to feel going into the game and focus.
“The more time you spend in it, it definitely gets easier in the game and it’s easier mentally as well.”
After 159 career regular season and playoff games with Kelowna — DeSouza has nine goals, 30 assists and 165 penalty minutes — he decided it was time for a change midway through his third full season.
He asked for a trade and went home for two weeks. The transaction came on Nov. 30, 2023 in a one-for-one deal involving another overage defender, Kayden Sadhra-Kang.
“Coming to Brandon and the experience I had here, the two weeks was worth the wait,” DeSouza said. “If I had it to go back and do again, I would wait a month.”
The key to enjoying his time in Brandon was how quickly he became one of the guys. DeSouza, who has a big personality, said it took four days.
“It was just such a good room, and with the coaches and management, they were very easy to talk to and checked in on us,” DeSouza said. “It was nice to have conversations with them that weren’t about hockey or feel like you’re under the microscope.
“They would talk to you like a human being instead of a player, which is awesome.”
Another part of the equation was that Brandon is a much smaller city than Kelowna, which has grown substantially to about 230,000 people.
“The fact everything was so close in Brandon was awesome,” DeSouza said. “I didn’t even have a car and the boys would pick me up. It was two minutes to go to the rink, two minutes to go to his house that’s quote-unquote across town. It was just different.
“My billet family was fantastic, and I wasn’t sure about going back into a billet house after living with Noah for two years. You’re always a little unsure of what you’re going to get and they (Sean and Amanda Dryden) were fantastic.”
He was also thankful for his Kelowna billets, Jeff and Carley Joyce and Linda and Ken Seinen, and gave a shoutout to Kelowna owner, president and general manager Bruce Hamilton — and senior scouting advisor Lorne Frey — for drafting him.
He’s especially thankful for his Brandon teammates, saying there were no egos in the room and that made it an outstanding experience.
“Everyone brought a piece that was helpful, even though we had some guys who were quiet,” DeSouza said. “They spoke up and their presence felt and we still wanted to have them around. There weren’t any cliques and nobody just hung out on their own. Everybody wanted to do something together, and to be honest, that was something I never experienced in my career.”
He said that might be playing poker or going to a movie or grabbing a bite to eat, and everyone was included, something he said stems from the outstanding internal leadership in the group. He said his fellow overagers set the tone, with Brett Hyland serving as an excellent captain and Jayden Wiens keeping players accountable.
“Nobody in that room asked someone to do something they wouldn’t do,” DeSouza said. “That’s what made it a great room.”
He said that made him grateful to the Wheat Kings organization, including head coach and general manager Marty Murray, assistant coaches Del Pedrick and Mark Derlago and owner Jared Jacobson, for bringing him in.
The big defenceman had two goals, three assists and 51 penalty minutes in 38 games with Brandon. During his five-year WHL career, he ended up with 10 goals, 38 assists, 212 penalty minutes and a plus-minus of 4. The league doesn’t track blocked shots, which is a real shame in DeSouza’s case.
Not many players have his ability and willingness to block shots, and his aptitude for the job seemed to inspire his teammates. A lot of DeSouza’s desire to eat pucks came because Noah was a goalie and that allowed the defenceman to see the job differently.
“I’ve always wanted to help out the goalies and have a close relationship with every goalie I ever played with because my brother was a goalie,” DeSouza said. “I used to skate with my brother and hear what his goalie coach would say about ‘If a D-man does this, he’s just hanging out you out to dry. Talk to your D-man, and if he does his job, it’s your job to stop the puck.’ I got a lot of insight from how my brother saw the game.
“I also started doing it in Kelowna as a rookie and no one else wanted to do it. The more I did it, the more I played. It was something I was good at and I wanted to do everything I could for the team.”
This showed in the team’s loss to the Moose Jaw Warriors in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals.
DeSouza was dealing with some very real pain in the playoffs after being hurt in the season finale. He damaged the oblique muscles in the right side of his ribcage, which usually makes it painful to twist or turn.
“Playing through that wasn’t too fun but there was no way I was going to miss any games, no matter how far we went,” DeSouza said.
What’s next is a little uncertain. He committed to Halifax’s Dalhousie University a year ago but is also keeping an eye out for pro offers.
But whatever’s next will be new.
Every other year, DeSouza went home to prepare for the next season. That wasn’t the case after the loss in Game 4 to Moose Jaw on April 4, because it was suddenly over.
“It was different for sure,” DeSouza said. “You go through the Western Hockey League and every single year, at the end of the season, it’s just go back to the gym and get back working and go back to your team and the boys.
“It’s obviously a little different now. It was emotional for sure to see it come to an end, especially when you’re in the league for quite some time.
“You see the 20-year-olds and the looks on their faces. They keep telling you have time, and now here I am telling those guys they have time. It comes at you fast.”