Big changes loom on ice
Pitching a playoff overhaul
The 2019 boys and girls ice hockey tournament brackets will be announced Saturday by the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association, and chances are this year will be one of the last postseason events in its current format.
IN THE SLOT
The MIAA’s Tournament Management Committee has been working on a potential complete overhaul of the tournament system statewide, parts of which already were approved by the Board of Directors in December.
While a big part of the TMC’s plan is a system of power seeding, which could begin as early as fall 2020, a more significant issue is realignment. The TMC’s proposal would make several changes to the current realignment formula, such as: a.) uniform rules across all MIAA sports; b.) number of divisions based on total teams in each sport; c.) divisions determined by total school population, rather than separated by male/ female enrollment figures; d.) adjustments made for private schools, co-ops and vocationals.
So what could this potentially mean for the future of high school hockey in Massachusetts?
Based on the TMC’s proposal, a sport with 151-200 teams would be divided into three divisions. With boys hockey in Massachusetts currently at 198 programs, clearly it would be at the high end of that scale. Would the MIAA bend its guidelines and allow for a fourth division? And how would the Super Eight tournament continue to fit into the picture, if uniformity across all sports (baseball is the only other with a Super Eight) clearly is the goal?
Just for kicks, we took the enrollment figures for each of the current 198 teams (for co-ops, the largest school is used) and attempted to create three equal divisions of 66 teams using the proposed MIAA definitions – privates/ co-ops up one division from enrollment placement, vocationals two down.
To put it kindly, the results of our experiment appear to be so laughably bad that we aren’t even going to waste ink, newsprint or bandwidth to publish them. Based on a strict interpretation of the guidelines, there would be 22 co-op programs in Division 1, with many Catholics and other top programs scattered across Divisions 2 and 3. Hopefully common sense would tell you, “Yeah, that’s not what we’re trying to do here.”
So while it’s good the MIAA would like to get uniformity across all sports, we’ve been saying for years that ice hockey is different – and should be treated as such. With co-op programs making up more than 20 percent of the teams across the state (currently 42), it’s only natural hockey will need to be handled differently.
So, what to do?
Fortunately, there are ideas — many of which originate here, and others that have been solicited from those who have been coaching or working in hockey for years and have much invested in trying to maintain or grow the sport under the pressure of constantly losing players to teams outside the MIAA purview.
There was a proposal among hockey coaches a couple of years ago that would have revamped the Super Eight tournament into a sort of “Super 16”. The idea was to create separate brackets of eight teams for the top Catholics and top Publics statewide.
The concept is there would be eight first-round games, with the losers dropping back into their regular division tournaments as is done now with the Super Eight play-in games (for simplicity’s sake, let’s say all losing teams go into the Division 1 tournaments, regardless their division alignment). The eight winners would continue in their bracket to quarterfinals, and those winners then would meet to determine the “Catholic” and “Public” champions.
The twist is that the four remaining teams also then would play a second “semifinal” matchup, crossing over Catholic vs. Public (1 vs. 2 in each), so the potential still exists for two Catholics or two Publics advancing to the state final.
Early rounds could be hosted by higher seeds. And since we’re dreaming big, the later games would be at central Division 1 college venues or even the Garden.
What about the rest?
As mentioned above, the losers would drop back into their respective division tournaments. But how many divisions would there be?
The MIAA formula calls for three. A “Super 16” technically would be a fourth. However, the belief here is there could be four regular divisions statewide. Division 3A has existed outside Eastern Mass. for more than a decade and, while any thought of expanding it to Eastern Mass. continues to meet resistance, it’s obvious something finally needs to be done to help out the small programs whose very existence is threatened more and more each year. (Ironically, just two years ago there were 201 teams statewide, which would have qualified for a fourth division under the proposed format.)
So we’ve outlined a rough proposal (see box below) for how the divisions could be aligned. Divisions 1 and 2 mostly would be unchanged.
Where things go off the rails is with Division 3, and our new Division 4. It’s safe to say, the disparity of Division 3 in East vs. Central and West has been a major sticking point for years. And moving co-op programs up a division has achieved the opposite effect, creating greater competitive imbalance and angering those programs.
So rather than move coops up, move them down into the new Division 4, along with small private schools and vocational teams. The other major change would be dividing Divs. 3-4 by East and West, rather than North/South.
Naturally, there could be appeals and tweaks to the proposal. In an attempt to balance things out, some current Eastern Mass. teams could play in the new West. And while the Division 4 alignments would be somewhat larger than the rest, historical data shows roughly the same number of teams would qualify.
And the girls?
As it stands, girls hockey’s 88 current programs would fall in line with the MIAA’s proposal for two divisions. The lone question is whether the time has come to create North/South brackets, or keep each division combined.
Girls hockey does work better as single statewide tournaments, with all but five programs based in traditional Eastern Mass. schools. The issue is that, while the alignments could be juggled from a numbers standpoint, the belief is there are distinct differences in the strength of programs across the brackets.