With the NCAA’s annual March Madness tournament starting this past week, I’ve been thinking about how we could get an exciting single-elimination hockey tournament put on our calendar. The NHL has 32 teams, which could make for an interesting mid-season tournament with teams seeded 1-32 and playing until one team is left standing.
It seems the NHL leadership (and definitely its fans) are resistant to any kind of major shakeup like this so I kept looking for a better fit and I’m quite please with where I landed: The Canadian Hockey League (CHL) should expand the Memorial Cup tournament from the four-team champions league affair it currently is to a massive, sprawling tournament including each of the CHL’s 60 teams across Canada and parts of the USA.
To be clear, this isn’t based on any speculation or rumor, but is rather simply an idea that I thought would be fun to explore. With that out of the way, let’s look at how this tournament could work, why it is a great idea, and what the biggest roadblocks would be. Time to get silly.
Current Memorial Cup Setup
For those who don’t know, the CHL is composed of Canada’s three top major junior hockey leagues, the Western Hockey League (WHL), Ontario Hockey League (OHL), and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League (QMJHL). The 60 combined teams are spread across nine Canadian Provinces (51 teams) and four American States (9 teams).
Each league has their own playoff tournament, with the league’s champion going on to compete in the Memorial Cup tournament, with a fourth team included as a host for the round robin style tourney. Each of the four teams plays each other with the first place team earning a bye to the Final while the second and third place teams duke it out one more time to see who earns the chance to play in the final game of the CHL calendar.
The host team is usually very motivated to build a good team in the year they’re slated to host, so they’re not always a pushover when compared to the excellent teams that won their respective league’s playoffs.
Massive Expansion of the Memorial Cup
There’s something to be said for the excellence, tenacity, and grit that it takes to win multiple consecutive 7-game series, but I believe that the excitement of single-elimination hockey is unmatched. That’s why the World Junior Championship always garners so much attention, plus the NHL’s recent 4-Nations Faceoff showed an appetite for high-stakes games where any single mistake could spell the end of your team’s run.
That’s why I’m proposing that the CHL creates a massive March Madness style tournament that includes all of their 60 teams. The NCAA’s tournament begins in earnest with 64 teams lining up and playing down to 32, 16, and so on until one final team is left standing. However, they have long held a few final qualification games (called The First Four) so that helps me feel better about not being too precious with the format here.
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In my tournament, the winners of each league and the host would get a bye past the first round, leaving 56 teams to play a total of 28 games to make it to the second round. Then, the winners and host would get reintroduced to the bracket, giving us a total of 32 teams again, letting us play down the bracket just like the NCAA.
An alternate format could help to reinforce the original aim of the Memorial Cup, to celebrate the best junior hockey team in Canada. It could do that by adding the final four teams from Canada’s Junior A playoffs (The Centennial Cup) instead of giving the winners and host a bye. I can absolutely see a Junior A team like the Brooks Bandits or Penticton Vees stealing a game some day, which would make for an amazing story.
As I mentioned before, the Memorial Cup was originally created to go to the best team in Canadian junior hockey, but now it’s more like a championship league trophy and not an award to the top team in Canada.
Why It Would Be a Great Idea
Come on, what do you have against a massive single-elimination tournament including all of the best drafted and undrafted talent in Canada? Imagine the moments we’d get, like a game between Gavin McKenna’s Medicine Hat Tigers and Michael Misa’s Saginaw Spirit? Or how about Matthew Schaefer’s Erie Otters playing against Landon DuPont’s Everett Silvertips?
Hockey is a game with relatively few scoring plays (unlike basketball where baskets are scored all the time), which increases the role of randomness in a single elimination format. That means we would see some shocking upsets and unbelievable cinderella runs in a tournament like this. We’d get more chances to see competition across the CHL’s constituent leagues, and see matchups that would only be possible right now if two teams won their separate leagues.
Why It Might Not Work
Obviously there are going to be significant roadblocks when trying to build a tournament this massive from the ground up, so I’m going to go over a few potential issues and qualms people could have with the tournament and answer them as best I can.
“Wouldn’t This Be A Logistical Nightmare?”
Yes, the logistical side of this would be a massive undertaking, with Canada being an absolutely massive nation and the CHL’s teams spread across its entire length from Victoria to Cape Breton. One part of this solution would come from the NCAA’s tournament, where they split the games in the first and second rounds of the tournament across eight separate venues before holding the remaining rounds in the host city.
This would not only reduce travel (at least in the middle of the tournament), but would also provide a ton of cities with the chance to host big, important games that will draw plenty of fans from across the country.
“Nobody Will Watch It With March Madness on TV at the Same Time”
The CHL regular seasons have just come to a close and their playoffs are set to begin next weekend, the second weekend of the March Madness tournament. A reason for hesitation on a massive CHL tourney could be that it would get buried when it comes to television ratings with such an established tournament to rival it. Easy answer here. Play the games on weekdays.
I know it may not be strictly ideal, but the NCAA tourney plays their first four rounds on Thursdays through Sundays, meaning the Memorial Cup could play games from Sunday to Wednesday will very minimal crossover. Can you imagine that viewing experience? Bouncing back and forth between watching two separate massive tournaments? Managing that many brackets?
“Some of the Worst CHL Teams Don’t Deserve a Chance to Beat the Best Teams”
Wrong! *buzzer sound* False! *buzzer sound* Incorrect!
Watching a team that missed their own league’s playoffs topple a highly seeded team would be incredible, something like Latvia’s U20 team beating Canada in the 2025 World Junior Championship. If you don’t want to lose to a bad team, you should try to win. Next issue.
“A Tournament Like This Devalues the Regular Season/League Playoffs”
Whenever you mention any change to the playoffs in any way, people get all up in arms about “devaluing the regular season”. I didn’t realize people cared so much about the sanctity of the regular season but apparently this is an issue.
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In this case, we wouldn’t be touching the independent leagues’ regular seasons or standalone playoffs in any way, just keeping the teams together long enough to play in one last tournament before the offseason. In fact, if you think this new Memorial Cup format would devalue the league playoffs, then what do you think of the current format? Isn’t it very similar?
Anyway, I think you’re kidding yourself if you think teams wouldn’t care about their league championship in the build up. As we’ve seen with March Madness, the teams coming into the tournament off of their league championship have so much swagger behind them and are excited to keep that ball rolling.
Some Final Thoughts
I’d like to reiterate something. This. Won’t. Happen.
Unfortunately, hockey is a very “traditional” sport, with traditions trumping fun far more often than would benefit the average player or fan. A historic tournament and trophy such as the Memorial Cup is unlikely to be changed so drastically, but I still think it would be a total blast if some version of this tourney was instituted, even a 32-team version.
Single elimination hockey tournaments are so incredibly fun, and it would be a thrill to have the CHL season end on such a climactic high note each year.
**Added during editing: The WHL just announced that the Penticton Vees are going to be added to the WHL from the BCHL for the 2025-26 season, with another WHL expansion franchise joining in Chilliwack the following season. That brings the CHL’s team total to 62, messing with my numbers for the format a bit, but itching us closer to the perfect total of 64 teams to have a complete tournament without any byes or teams left out.***
What do you think about my idea? Would you watch a tournament like this? What other ideas do you have to make the tournament even more wild? Sound off in the comment section below!