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I was at the X last night, and the games were disgraceful, but that shouldn't be news to anyone who reads this forum. Quite frankly, the MSHSL has got to do something about the hockey tournament. Either that, or this is just a year with a HUGE gap between the good and the bad. On the way home I got to thinking, which can be a dangerous thing.

Now that the MSHSL has gotten over their fear of seeding, I think one viable option would be to go to 12 teams. This would require seeding from top to bottom, with the pig-tail games on Wednesday. I also have no idea how the consolation round would work (and that would probably be the hangup), but I think this would be a good compromise between the present trainwreck and the one-class, eight-teamer.

Google Docs: 12 Team Hockey Tournament Section Groupings and Seedings

QRF values are from Ryan Weinzierl's minnesota-scores.net. While imperfect you can't argue too much with the seeding order it produces.

IMHO, what the League did to basketball was worse, but that's just me.

5-12 play on Wednesday.

QF's losers go to a 9-12 consolation round.

The remaining 8 play as they do now.

Won't happen, but an interesting idea!

I actually like this alot. The sections you linked to would work great, the only problem I see is that you can't break up Hill and White Bear. You could easily fix that by switching Minneapolis East to Section 4, Apple Valley to 5, and Hill-Murray to 6. Also Grand Rapids would need to be shifted to the Iron Range section. Then it would be perfect.

And do you even need a consolation round. If you did, you'd just have the winners of the first consolation round play the losers of the quarterfinals and just go from there.

I'd say state would like this with this:

(5)Wayzata vs (12)New Ulm
-winner plays (4)Hill-Murray

(8)Duluth East/Virginia vs (9)Brainard
-winner plays (1)Minnetonka

(6)Warroad vs (11)Rochester Lourdes
-winner plays (3)Blaine

(7)Apple Valley vs (10)Maple Grove
-winner plays (2)Edina

sorry but section 2 and 9 looks pretty weak and not balanced in relation to other sections..actually there are a few overly strong sections and not enough strength in others...not a bad idea..just need better balance.

The whole point of a two class system is that the schools with smaller enrollments do not have to compete against the larger schools. This idea is essentially the same as the tier 1 tier 2 system that the MSHSL got away from.

Good idea on shifting around to keep Hill-Murray and White Bear together.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Tier I/II tournament set up with the section final losers to the Tier II tournament? I wasn't old enough at the time to remember what the setup was.

This is one class, 12 sections, straight-up. Using geography as your baseline will always result in a few extremely soft sections, but there isn't a whole lot I can do about that.

GopherRock wrote:Good idea on shifting around to keep Hill-Murray and White Bear together.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't the Tier I/II tournament set up with the section final losers to the Tier II tournament? I wasn't old enough at the time to remember what the setup was.

This is one class, 12 sections, straight-up. Using geography as your baseline will always result in a few extremely soft sections, but there isn't a whole lot I can do about that.

No, what they did during those two godawful seasons was, when the coaches of each section met, they'd put the top eight teams in their section into Tier I. The rest were "dumped" into Tier II. They did this before the section tournaments began. This was how Greenway, the #9 seed in Section 7 in 1992, won the Tier II championship. This was how Rosemount, a team which had won one (yes, I said one) regular season game, ended up playing against Greenway for that championship.

It was brutal. Nice story for Rosemount in '92, but it was still brutal.

Lee