Hockey is a great North American tradition and our family heads off to the arena on a regular basis to watch our kids try to get a puck in a net. Daddy-o even builds an ice rink in the backyard every winter so they can play among themselves and with neighbourhood kids. My 10-year-old son was keen to play through summer and a few weeks ago his team was in the championship game. It was a summer house league 3-on-3 team so hardly a highly competitive environment. But what I saw at the game horrified me.

Two players got in a squabble on the ice and the coach from the other team started screaming “HIT HIM! HIT HIM!” You caught it when I said this was summer house league, right? And I did mention that the kids were 10-years-old, didn’t I?

This behaviour was carried on throughout the game by both the coach and several parents. The teenaged referee looked as though he might cry. I was quite sure there would be dads punching it out in the parking lot afterwards. So, it left me wondering about what happens out there in the world where parents are actually secretly (or not so secretly) hoping that their kid is the next Wayne Gretzky. How do they behave at games?

I decided to consult my uncle who, having raised a handful of athletic kids, has survived countless 6:00am hockey practices and out-of-town tournaments. He relayed some pretty shocking stories of hockey parent antics and expressed that he has always believed that parents should be made to view the game from behind sound-proof plexiglass to spare their kids from their abuse and damaging comments. On one occasion, parents sitting behind him in the arena were behaving so outrageously that he turned around and snapped a photo of them. Yeah, that went over like a lead balloon – apparently they didn’t want proof that they were ridiculous ranting idiots at their kids’ sports games.

Since hockey has generally just been a good bit of fun for our family, this was a real eye-opener. So, hockey parents – what are your experiences? Are the parents crazy, a bit over-excited or mostly just sensible and enjoying a good game of hockey?