International Series: New Format for Top Division Playoffs - Junior Hockey News

Ufa, Russia - Yesterday the International Ice Hockey Federation announced a restructuring of the World U20 and U18 Junior Ice Hockey Championships. This will take effect at the upcoming U18 WJHC but for the U20 WJHC will not be put into action until 2014 since the structuring was already approved for this year.

To explain the changes, let's first take a look at how the playoffs are currently run. If you have trouble understanding it just by reading, I don't blame you. It might help to write out a bracket as you follow along. Just as Divisions I and II, the Top Division is split into two groups: A and B; however at this level each group has only five teams instead of six. The tournament begins with a Round-Robin format where each team plays each other within the group once.

Once all games have been completed, the winners of the groups earn a bye through the Quarterfinals while 2A plays 3B and 2B plays 3A. At the same time 4A, 4B, 5A, and 5B face each other in a Relegation Round where the four teams battle it out for the three remaining spots in the Top Division for next season. The losing country gets bumped down to DI.

In the Semifinals, B1 faces the winner of A2 vs. B3 and A1 goes against the winner of B2 vs. A3. You can pretty much figure out how the rest of this one goes: the winners play for the Championship and the losers fight for third place.

The IIHF executed the move to change all of this for the first time since 2003 during their annual congress meeting held in Helsinki, Finland. The new format sees the elimination of the first round bye and creates a much more conventional playoff. There will still be at least 30 games in the tournament with the possibility of 31 (the current number). The breakdown for this is much more simplistic.

There will still be two groups of five teams; A and B playing in a Round-Robin exactly as before. The first change occurs at the end of the Preliminaries where now the top four teams in each group move onto the Quarterfinals and the two five seeds play a best-of-three in a Relegation Round. Winner stays in the Top Division, loser gets chopped.

For those moving on, it turns into a bracket tournament: Game 1, A1 vs. B4 | Game 2, B2 vs. A3 | Game 3, A2 vs. B3 | Game 4, B1 vs. A4. While the later rounds haven't been officially announced yet for the U20 WJHC structure, it is safe to assume it will align with that of the U18. If this is the case, the Semifinals will be the winners of Game 1 and Game 2 facing one another and the winners of Game 3 and Game 4 will also go head-to-head. The rest is obvious as the winners play one another for the Title and the losers go at it for third.

This new system will be met with arguments both for and against it. Those in opposition have a fair case that it's too open of a playoff if only two teams don't make it, but the bigger picture here is that there will now be more games that have meaning. If given the choice to attend a game between two teams that have no chance at winning the title or a game where you get to see a team on its way to a World Championship, the decision wouldn't be very difficult. The tournament needed a shakeup and not only has one been made, but it's probably the most fair option out there as well.