It's hockey season again and if you have a kid on a rep team you spend so much time with these people that it's very much like a second family.

I don't belong to a hockey family anymore. My youngest nephew is playing AAA minor atom in Toronto and I plan on watching him play this weekend and all season, but aunts and uncles, grandparents and friends are on the peripheral of the family.

But, I have been part of the hockey family before so I know what goes on. If you're new to it I'll tell you how it works.

The first thing you need to know is that hockey families are all dysfunctional, just like most of our own families when we were growing up. There's the one person everybody talks about, there's the person everybody likes, and there's the person nobody likes. Not among the kids, of course, but the parents.

At the head of the family is the coach, and there are always issues with the coach. Even on Leave it to Beaver, Ward may have been the undisputed boss but he wasn't always right and not everybody was happy with him all the time. Some people are never happy with the coach, and at times everybody is unhappy with him.

Just like at the family picnic, the women tend to gravitate together and the men gravitate together. The women talk about family and such, the men talk about hockey. A lot of the men played hockey themselves, but even if they didn't, most consider themselves experts.

There's a lot of waiting time in hockey, which means a lot of time for chitchat. There's before the game, there's during the game if there's a flood between one of the periods, and after the game waiting for the kids to get dressed.

It's human nature to discuss what's wrong with the team, or how it can be improved. There's only so much good you can talk about, especially if the team loses. Eventually, it all comes back to the coach. We're paying all this money for our kids to play on this team, why isn't he a magician?

I've seen two mutiny situations in which the coach was replaced during the season. It's not pretty and it's embarrassing for people when they look back on it. One was a AAA team that had won the OMHA championship the season before, but to the parents' chagrin they weren't winning every game. For years those parents apologized to that coach, because the team played considerably worse after he was replaced.

Individually, parental issues with the coach are usually about ice time. Everybody watches their own kid all the time, and most think their own kid is more valuable than they are. You complain and you're immediately branded as trouble. Coaches talk among themselves, as well, and when you get a reputation for complaining it doesn't go away.

Now, during games you're going to want to yell at the referee. It's a natural inclination - I've done it myself. The thing is, it's pretty cowardly - you're hiding up in the stands, you're anonymous and generally there are no consequences.

In almost every case the referee knows more about the rules than you do, and generally he has a family. You wouldn't yell derogatory comments at your kid's teacher from the playground because your kid isn't getting enough computer time.

Sounds kind of negative, but that's just the worst of it. It's a great experience for your kids, which teaches them so many things about life that can't be taught elsewhere. It's fun for you, too. The camaraderie, the shared experience, the tournaments, the highs of winning, the laughs. It's all worth it, believe me, so enjoy your new family.