History
High school hockey players throughout Minnesota participate in a maximum of 25 contests, excluding the section tournaments and the Minnesota State Boys' High School Hockey Tournament. Teams currently play three 17-minute periods to comprise a game. A lengthened period time was recently adopted by the Minnesota State High School League.
Boys hockey concludes their season with a four day tournament in March that features sixteen teams competing for championships in both classes. From 1945 through 1991 the tournament consisted of a single class, eight team tournament instead of the present day two class (AA and A) tournament. Private schools were not allowed to play in the Tournament until the 1974-75 season. In 1992-93, the tournament was composed of Tier I and II teams. This two-year experiment sent the top teams from each of the eight sections to the Tier I portion of the tournament and the remaining teams conducted a playoff to determine who would be included in the Tier II tournament. In 1994, the dual class system was adopted and teams were placed into a class structure based on school enrollments. Attendance has been strong throughout the years with 22 tournaments eclipsing the 100,000+ barrier and in 2004 a record setting total of 120,114 (both classes). In the 2006 State Tournament, the average attendance per game in the championship brackets was 18,000 people. The Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament is currently the largest state sports tournament in the United States in terms of viewing and attendance, beating both the Texas and Florida's State High School Football Tournament and the Indiana State High School Basketball Tournament.
Neal Broten, Herb Brooks, Phil Housley, Reed Larson, Tom Preissing, Doug Zmolek, John Mayasich, Craig Norwich, Mike Antonovich, Henry Boucha, Steve Janaszak, Brian Lee, John Pohl, Dave Spehar, Ben Ulland, Mark Parrish, TJ Oshie, Paul Martin, Mike Crowley, Mike Ramsey and Blake Wheeler are among the many notable players that participated in Minnesota high school hockey.
Since 1994, the MSHSL's process to determine section assignments for boys' hockey is based on school enrollments and activity classifications. The basic premise is to place the largest 64 schools into Class AA and the remaining high schools in Class A. Both Classes are then divided into 8 Sections each. Teams are placed into their section assignments with geographic location as a primary consideration. High schools initially placed in Class A have the option to play at the Class AA level.
Beginning with the 2007 state tournament, the top four teams in each class are seeded. Coaches of the participating schools vote to determine the seeded teams the Saturday before the state tournament. The four teams are then bracketed so that if the seeded teams advance, the top seed plays the fourth seed while the second and third seeds play each other. The quarterfinal opponents of the seeded teams are determined by a blind draw.
Read more about this topic: High School Boys Ice Hockey In Minnesota
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