The top teams in the Mid-States Club Hockey Association are gearing up for the postseason — including some major changes to the Challenge Cup bracket.

Quarterfinal and semifinal rounds no longer will be best-of-three series, including a winner-take-all minigame if teams split the first two contests.

Instead, the Challenge Cup tournament's final format will be an eight-team double-elimination bracket leading up to the championship game March 3 at Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights.

“You have to lose twice unless you get to the championship, and then if you lose in the championship and that's your first loss, you're out,” Mid-States director Ryan Harrison said. “Basically you're not having a two-game series and we're not having an issue where like the same teams who played each other in the round robin are playing a two-game series against each other. They could play one game and then they're usually going to bounce down and then you get a different opponent.”

The Wickenheiser Cup and Founders Cup playoff formats remain the same as in past seasons.

The Challenge Cup will start with its usual round robin. The biggest question is whether it will consist of 10 or 12 teams, which will be determined Sunday at a Mid-States meeting.

If there are 10 teams, the round robin will be two groups of five, and if it is 12, it will be two groups of six. Either way, the top four finishers from each group advance to final Challenge Cup bracket and will be reseeded one through eight depending on round robin results.

This is where the change begins.

Instead of the best-of-three series that has been used for many years, losers of the first game in the final Challenge Cup bracket move on to the elimination side. Survivors of each round in the elimination bracket face teams that have lost on the winner’s side until there is one team left on each side of the bracket.

Those teams meet for a winner-take-all championship game.

“I'm open to anything,” SLUH coach Steve Walters said. “The league put a lot of thought into it and when they first explained it, you've got to get your head around it, but the bottom line is the way we look at the playoffs is you've got to win the big one. And it's a double elimination tournament. So you lose one game and you're still in the tournament.”

De Smet coach Casey Ott said: “I think it will be fine. I think the whole purpose is to make this a fun event for the boys and all the teams and I think they’re going to enjoy it. It’s going to be fun to see how it all plays out.”

Marquette coach Gary Tockman was not a fan of minigames in the previous postseason setup.

He is taking a wait-and-see approach with the new system.

“I just kind of wish that they would just find a system and stick with it so you know what to expect,” Tockman said. “We’ll see if it is better than it has  been in the past, and if it is, then great.”

There will be no more ties in the new Challenge Cup format.

If there is a tie in regulation, a game would go to a five-minute sudden death period followed by a tiebreaking shootout if needed.

“You've got to win the game you're playing and you can't look past it and you can't overthink it,” Walters said. “Just win the game.”

Winning, obviously, is the key with any playoff format but winning early in this format takes on more importance. Aside from staying alive, those going to the elimination bracket would potentially play six games to win the championship, rather than four for the team emerging from the winners bracket.

Ott said the key in the round robin phase is to earn a preferential seed.

“That definitely would change it,” Ott said. “The goal is the traditional, you want to control your seed going into it because that’s controlling your destiny in a sense, and you’ve got to be nimble enough to be able to adapt if that’s the case if you’re in that bracket and what you’ve got to do to get out of that bracket.”

For the third successive year, the Challenge Cup and Wickenheiser Cup will be decided at the Centene Community Ice Center in Maryland Heights instead Enterprise Center.

Moving the championship to Centene has been a source of debate within the Mid-States community. Gone is the novelty of playing on the same ice as the St. Louis Blues, but the layout and size of Centene offers an unforgettable atmosphere for the players.

“It was just an electric environment,” Harrison said. “Talking with a lot of kids who played … I think kids want to play in a loud atmosphere like that and that gets taken away when you go to the Enterprise Center. You get 6,000 people playing in the 20,000-seat arena, you know, it's not that same feel. You get that emptiness, and with (Centene) you're right on top of each other. You can't hear anybody and it was a rocking night.”

Mid-States once again will have "Super Semifinal Saturday" on Feb. 25 at Centene. The second games of each Wickenheiser Cup semifinal series are scheduled for 1:20 p.m. and 3:20 p.m. February 25, followed by the Founders Cup final at 7:20 p.m. and the final Challenge Cup elimination bracket game at 9:20 p.m.

Both the Challenge Cup and Wickenheiser Cup championship games are scheduled for March 3 at Centene.

Aside from the playoff changes, Mid-States has experimented with some games having 16 minute periods instead of 15 minutes and selected games on the night before Thanksgiving and on New Year’s Day had an ice scrape between the second and third periods.

Harrison said the experimental changes are in response to members wishes about making the games longer, but as always the added cost of ice time is a factor.

“We're just trying to improve our overall product,” Harrison said. “Obviously, I don't think we can afford to go to the scrapes all the time, but we are definitely looking to increase that or see where we can add that where we can.”