Montreal: The second season of The Tournament, CBC’s mockumentary series about children’s hockey and overzealous parents, is shooting in Montreal until Nov. 15.

The 10 x 30 season will continue to follow the Warriors, a fictional team of misfit kids and their obnoxiously ambitious parents and, this year, the producers say that they have an advantage. The hockey strike is over.

‘We had thought that not having hockey during our first season might have helped,’ says producer Bruce Hills. ‘It didn’t. I think the fact that the hockey season is back and going strong should really help us. We’ve already had promos run during Hockey Night in Canada, and the NHL has been hugely supportive.’

The original six-part mini scored an average audience of 547,000 during its January-February run.

Season two will be directed by Bruce McDonald (Highway 61, Hard Core Logo), Wendy Hopkins and Peter Svatek (Student Seduction, Baby For Sale), and the various plots from the first season are thickening. One hockey mom will be engaged to two men at once, and the motley crew of kids – one a perpetual vomiter, another more interested in dance choreography than hockey – have returned.

Hills admits that the people behind the hocku-mockumentary did pause to think about whether they were messing with a national sacred cow. ‘I thought about the potential backlash, but only momentarily,’ he acknowledges.

‘We’ve kept things funny, fair, fresh, and above all, accurate. The e-mails we received in response to the first season were overwhelmingly positive, with only a few negative ones. Most of them were like, ‘I know that guy!’ or ‘I’ve sat in the stands with those people!”

Hills says that the show has proven popular with NHL players as well, so much so that he’s working to arrange cameos by several hockey pros in season two. ‘We’re trying to get several Hall of Famers into the final episode.’

Shot by DOP Alfonso Maiorana (No Quick Fix), the second run of The Tournament, with a budget of $5 million, is produced by Howard Busgang, Andy Nulman, Gilbert Rozon and Bruce Hills of Adjacent 2 Productions, and the CBC, with support from Telefilm Canada and the CTF. Season two premiers on Nov. 15.