BCHL Round Robin

People have been wondering, and I'm hopeful to give some answers here, as to what exactly happens now that there are three teams left in the BCHL playoffs. Well the third round is essentially a double round robin format, with a unique twist, but first some history.

A few seasons ago, with the league in its current alignment, had the Island and Mainland Divisions playing towards a Coastal Conference Championship, and the Interior Conference standing on its own. In the playoffs, the Interior Division played Best of 7 series to get the Interior Champions (2 rounds), while the Island and Mainland played a pair of Best of 5's (for Division Championships), then a Best of 7 to decide who would face the Interior as the Coastal Conference Champs.

While the system sounds a lot easier to explain than the current format, teams believed a change needed to be made, as the Island/Mainland had to win 10 games to make the final, and the Interior only had to win eight. If the series had all gone max length, the Final would be played between a Coastal team playing 17 games, and an Interior team playing 14, which just wasn't fair.

So, the Round Robin was adopted to determine which two teams would play for the Fred Page Cup, and after some tweaks each season, we are at this format of 3 WINS AND YOU'RE IN which is as simple as it can be put.

Here's the schedule:
Tuesday March 29th - West Kelowna @ Chilliwack
Thursday March 31st - Nanaimo @ West Kelowna
Saturday April 2nd - Chilliwack @ Nanaimo
Monday April 4th - Nanaimo @ Chilliwack
Wednesday April 6th - Chilliwack @ West Kelowna
Friday April 8th - West Kelowna @ Nanaimo

The key to this format, is 3 WINS. Once a team has won three games, they will advance to the BCHL Final, and have home ice, while the other two teams go head to head until the next team has won three games. There is a possibility that after the first six scheduled games, there would be a 3-way tie at 2-2, then there are two other games scheduled in a Page Playoff format. If the teams are tied with 2-2 records after Game 6, then Seed 2 (West Kelowna) would visit Chilliwack (Seed 1) with the winner getting the first spot in the final, and then Nanaimo would play the loser for the second spot. The top two seeds would get two chances to win their way into the Fred Page Cup final.

Looking at a breakdown of the possibilities in results looks like this:

• There are 41 possible combinations of results through the first six games
• In 63.4% of the scenarios, the sixth Game on April 8th would be played as a deciding game, either for one team advancing, or the 3-way tie.
• There are 9 possibilities of a 3-way tie at 2-2 (22%)
• The earliest one team could advance is April 4th (9.8%)
• There's a 26.8% chance that one team advances on April 6th.

Round 3 tickets are on sale starting Tuesday at 10 AM at the Warriors office. Visit the office between 10-4 Tuesday, 9-4 Wednesday, or 9-6 Thursday before the box office opens at 6 pm. Get your tickets early! For those who cannot travel to Chilliwack to watch Tuesday, tune in at www.mixlr.com/bchlwarriors starting with the pre-game show at 6:40