High School Hockey State Co-Champs?!?!?!?

2) My brother still pisses and moans about that bullshit. Coming back the next morning was the Dumbest fuckin move in the MSHSL other than dividing the hockey tourney into two classes.

 

Yeah, but soccer doesn't count. It's a communist sport.

 

The only problem with that is that one team has to drive 450 miles one way to the game. So coming back isn't really an option.

They do ties in soccer all the time. Eight overtimes in hockey.... and it was a four-hour game. It's not like they made 'em sing "Kumbaya." I think the MHSAA can be as big a group of blowhards as any outside ESPN or the NCAA, but they made the right call.

 

The problem is most people view co-championships as a cop-out. At least once every year, when two or three teams end up tied for first place in the league standings (in the regular season) somebody asks me if there's some sort of tiebreaker. I always tell them, no, they're co-champions. No tiebreaker is needed. In football in this part of this state, there is a tiebreaker because only one team per league can go to the playoffs. In every other sport, no tiebreaker is needed, but most people can't abide ties.

 

Well, some people will have to suck an egg. I think 109 minutes of tied hockey is plenty. Four hours and 22 minutes of hockey is more than enough. And one of the teams had a nine-hour bus ride home the next day. So, in this case, it was the right decision.

 

Yeah, but....I'm sure there is a rule in place stating that. There is nothing in the books about ending a game after 8 OTs. That's what sucks about it. It was just a spot decision.

No one said much when the football team went to OT last Nov. Of course that was on TV...ratings win out.

 

Covered a state title field hockey game that ended in a tie one time. Both teams burst into inconsolable tears when they learned their fate (Took MIAA officials quite some time to come up with same, big surprise).
Kids are tough. Any form of settling the issue would have been fine by them, all of them.

 

Mike, as a veteran observer of the MIAA, do you think that co-champions is actually the desired outcome for that group, as I've heard some people suggest?

 

If this were the NHL, I'd agree. Make 'em play Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals until some poor looser puts it in the back of the net.

But these are high school kids. They already played EIGHT overtime periods. Declaring co-champions is perfectly justified in that case.

 

A 15-12 team that managed 34 shots in 109 minutes won a Michigan state championship? Christ.

Somewhere, Red Berenson is rolling over in his grave.

 

If Red Berenson is, in fact, rolling over in his grave, it's likely because he isn't dead yet.

 

See, that's what makes it funny, jackass. Red looks like he died in 1988.