Okay, so, I’ve been trying to get this whole “mass hs hockey playoff bracket” thing figured out. You wouldn’t believe the rabbit hole I went down today. I’m a huge hockey fan, and the high school playoffs in Massachusetts are a big deal. I wanted to make my own bracket to follow along, maybe even win a little pool with my buddies.
So, I started digging. First, I hit up the usual sports sites, but they only had bits and pieces. Then, I found the “official” site for Massachusetts High School Hockey. Cool, right? Well, it’s got all the teams, the schedules, the standings for both men and women… a ton of stuff. But trying to piece together the actual bracket from that was a headache.
I kept clicking around, jumping from page to page, and I finally found some pairings for the 2024 MIAA Boys Division 1 Tournament. They said 33 teams qualified. Thirty-three! That’s a lot of games to track. I started writing them down on a piece of paper, trying to sketch out a bracket. It looked like a spiderweb by the time I was done.
Then I saw a note that said, “To see MIAA Tournament game results, click the League.” Which league? Where? It wasn’t exactly clear. More clicking, more digging. I ended up on another page that showed a bracket, but it was just for one division. There’s Division I, II, III, IV! I only focused on Boys Division 1, that had a preliminary game with Lexington vs. Waltham, and in the round of 32, there was Lexington vs. St. John’s. So many teams!
- Preliminary Game
- #33 Lexington (6) vs. #32 Waltham (3)
- ROUND OF 32
- Lexington (0) vs. #1 St. John’s
I found another page that mentioned something about a Division II State Tournament, with dates and times to be updated, but I was already overwhelmed with Division I. I realized this was way more complicated than I thought.
Then, there was another site talking about 14 girls’ and boys’ hockey teams from Western Mass. I mean, come on! I just wanted a simple bracket. It felt like I was putting together a jigsaw puzzle with a thousand pieces, and half of them were missing.
My Realization
After a few hours of this, I realized I was in way over my head. This whole bracket thing is a lot more complicated than it seems. I gave up on making my own from scratch. It’s probably easier to just find a completed one online somewhere and use that. Maybe next year I’ll start earlier, or maybe I’ll just stick to watching the games and enjoying the action without worrying about the bracket so much. It’s supposed to be fun, right? Not a full-time research project!
