Playoffs for high school sports generally consist of a one game elimination tournament between the top teams in the state. Baseball is the most widely known exception to this generality because a series is played for every round in baseball. Another common factor in the playoff system for most sports is that you must qualify for playoffs meaning that not every team makes the playoffs and the regular season matters.
Hockey, however, has a special playoff system compared to other Missouri sports. This is because every team in Mid-States Club Hockey Association (MSCHA) makes the playoffs. MSCHA consists of three individual tournaments, which correspond to the teams’ abilities. The tournaments are the Challenge Cup, the Wickenheiser Cup and the Founders Cup.
Since every team makes the playoffs, the regular season seems to have little effect on the outcome of the season other than determining which tournament teams will play in. However, even the seeding is not dependent upon the outcome of the season.
“Some teams make the Challenge Cup off of their school name rather than how they did during the season,” sophomore Gabe Jacus said. “Certain schools could win one game and make the Challenge Cup while a small school could lose one or two and not make it.”
The questioning of a team’s validity during the regular season has been a question pondered by players over the years because the timing of games during the regular season can be critical to the outcome of games. This is due to the club hockey season corresponding with the high school season and players being out of town.
“A lot of the season depends on whether or not teams have their top players in town,” freshman Josh Becker said. “For some schools like Christian Brothers College missing a few players doesn’t have the same effect as Clayton missing a few players.”
Many players feel that MSCHA had good intentions behind creating tournaments for all teams but feel that the decision on how teams are seeded or placed needs to change.
“I think that something is wrong when a team that has only a handful of wins makes the Challenge Cup last year when other teams don’t” sophomore Yates Sanders said. “There needs to be a better way of seeding teams in the future.”
The tournaments have a few major differences in the teams comprising the tournament. The Challenge Cup has the best teams or the teams that are from the larger schools. The Wickenheiser Cup is generally the small private schools and good small public schools. This leaves the teams that had very few positives to their season in the Founders Cup. Although this is not a rule, this seems to be the intentions behind MSCHA’s creation of three end of the season tournaments according to Becker and Jacus.
“I can’t think of a good way to seed teams but if there were more teams MSCHA would be able to do class sizes like in other sports but there just aren’t enough teams right now,” Becker said. “Hopefully in the future there are more teams.”