MHSAA announces changes to hockey classifications, postseason seedings

The Michigan High School Athletic Association’s Representative Council is changing the way hockey teams are classified as well as they’ll be Seeded in the postseason tournament, the MHSAA announced.

Beginning next season, teams will be classified by the enrollment “but with consideration of whether those teams are standalone (one school) or cooperative (multi-school) programs,” the MHSAA said in a news release.

Approximately half of the MHSAA’s hockey program are cooperatives. But beginning next year, the standalone and cooperative programs will be ranked by enrollment on separate lists.

The top one-third of teams on each list will be Categorized as Division 1, the second third will be Division 2 and the lowest third will be Division 3. The hope is that change will rebalance the divisions.

In the past, Division 1 has been made up Mostly of cooperative programs because their combined enrollments pushed them to the top of the overall classification, according to the MHSAA.

That doesn’t mean they’ve had an advantage, according to the MHSAA. But it has provided opportunities for hockey players whose schools might otherwise not have enough Athletes to field a full team.

When it comes to the postseason, the MHSAA said the Michigan Power Ratings will be used to seed the first round of the tournament, the regional round of the tournament. There is no district round.

After the state quarterfinals, teams will be reseeded for the semifinals by a seeding committee. The No. 1 seed will play the No. 4 seed and the No. 2 seed will play the No. 3 seed with the winners advancing to the state Finals.

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