Each year, before the beginning of the high school hockey season, the MHSAA determines the fate of many teams' playoff chances months before the first post-season pucks are dropped at center ice in February.

It's a two-stage process: The teams are bundled in their regions and then a blind draw determines who plays who. It's a rather arbitrary way to decide a playoff champion, and it's 180 degrees out of phase with the traditional strucure of a tournament bracket, which is designed to funnel the stronger teams to each other in each successive round, unless an underdog pulls an upset. It's the way that the MHSAA structures the football playoffs, but not hockey. 

The manner in which the hockey teams are assigned regions is a bit puzzling, especially in Southeastern Michigan, where the teams are so densely concentrated. 

For example, there is no rationale to place Orchard Lake St. Mary's, Brother Rice and Novi Catholic Central in the same region, unless to ensure that only one of them will advance to a quarterfinal game. Same with pairing Macomb Dakota, Rochester United and Utica Eisenhower in the same sub-region. Ditto for U of D Jesuit and Grosse Pointe North as well as Plymouth and Salem. Of this group, Rochester United is the lowest-ranked (No. 12) according to ushsho.com

Nor is there any logical reason to staffing a region with a set of teams that would likely never play beyond the second round unless the highest-ranked team in it was, for example, West Bloomfield, which No. 33 in Division 2 according to ushhso.com. That's why West Bloomfield and Royal Oak are matched in a regional final at Detroit Skate Club. Congratulations to them, by the way, but with a little more discression in organizing the brackets, their seasons might have likely ended already, and both Trenton and Livonia Stevenson would have a better chance of playing at least one more game. Instead, the powers that be put them in the same region, hosted by Trenton. It can't be a geographical thing, since Livonia is closer to West Bloomfield than it is to Trenton. 

A casual look at the remaining teams illustrates that the current playoff structure is not conducive to whittling the competition down to a fine point: It just seems to want to conclude the tournament as quickly as possible with minimium inconvenience. Proportionally, there were as many potential mismatches with 16 teams left in each Division as there were in rounds one and two. 

In fact, consider the results of some of the regional final games: Brighton 9, DeWitt 1; Utica Eisenhower 11, Grand Blanc 4; U of D Jesuit 8, Troy 0; Plymouth 8, Dearborn Heights Crestwood 0; and Cranbrook 11, St. Clair 0.

Cranbrook has outscored its competion in the playoffs 29-0 in three games. 

And so, the scenario repeats year in and out, with a mixture of mercies and tight contests at random times, depending solely on the assigments and draws. In an effort, apparently to establish fairness and balance, the playoff structure almost seems pre-determined to filter out many of the better teams as soon as possible while prolonging the runs of some weaker teams until their season ends in a regional final or quarterfinal in ugly fashion. Admittedly, the relative strength of each team is unknown prior to any season, which actually amplifies the effects of imbalance come playoff time, when some regions are stacked and some are not. 

And here's another elephant in the room: If the current system is going to permit schools that import players from other states or even other nations to compete in a post-season playoff against schools where the viola players outnumber the hockey players, these scales will always be tipped. But the answer is not to, at least by appearance sake, compensate by placing the strongest programs in the same pool to devour each other. Nor is it to have separate playoffs for private and public schools, as some are advocating. If nothing else changes, that will just multiply the same circumstances by two. Certainly the powers that be recognize the inevitability of this present arrangement, and the unasked question is: Why do they continually do it this way?

Convenience was posed as one answer. Another might be that no one is offering a viable alternative. Until now. 

Time for a little (self) cross-promotion. Hockey Weekly published an article this week that addresses this issue in considerable detail. It poses a viable and affordable solution that eliminates the possibility of this current imbalance ever happening again and gets the entire tournament completed in a two-week time frame.

It's worth a look, and it's worth considering a different approach to what has become an antiquated and unbalanced method of determining MHSAA high school hockey playoff champions.