Rules & Format

4 Game Guarantee Tournament Format

Six Teams in the Tournament make up one division.  Each team will play three round-robin games.  The top four teams will play in the “finals” where the 1st place team will play the 2nd place team (for the Gold Medal game) and the 3rd place team will play the 4th place team (for the Bronze Medal game).  The 5th and 6th place teams will play in a consolation game.

Point System

Tiebreaking Rules for position/placement

Teams receive points; 3 points for a SHUTOUT win, 2 points for a regular win, 1 point for a tie, and 0 points for a loss

  1. Winner of head to head, during round-robin play

  2. Least goals scored against during round-robin play

  3. Total goals for during round-robin play

  4. Team to score first goal scored in head to head during round-robin play (if applicable)

  5. TOTAL least penalty minutes total taken during round-robin play.

  6. a rule will be make by the tournament staff

Game Forfeits– Game forfeits do to a no show will automatically result in a 1 to 0 score.  The team causing the forfeit will automatically be assessed the loss.  Games ending prematurely due to a referee decision, or a team leaving the ice will automatically end with a loss being assessed to the team causing the forfeit and a win to their opponent regardless of the score.  If the opponent of the forfeiting team had been winning then the score will remain as is, if the opponent was losing then the score will revert back to a 1-0 score.  Teams causing forfeits under these circumstances will not be eligible for semifinal or championship games.

Tiebreaking Rules (Example)

When teams are tied in points, the tie-breaking rules are applied to determine first, second, third, etc. 

Each seed (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.) is determined one at a time starting with the 1st seed.  Once the 1st seed is determined we repeat the process with the remaining teams 

Working through the evaluations for seeds is as follows:

  1. starting with head to head.  If three teams are tied and team 1 beats team 2 , and team 3 did not play either team 1 or 2,  team 2 would be removed from that round of seeding, and team 1 and 3 would still be considered tied.  

  2. We then use least goals against to break the tie between team 1 and 3.  

  3. During the next seeding round team 2 would be reconsidered for placement (or automatically placed into 3rd seed).  

  4. Here is another example, three teams are tied with four points.  In head to head play team 1 beats team 2, and team 3 tied both team 1 and team 2, and team 1 has 8 goals against, team 2 has 10, and team 3 has 9.  

    1. Under this scenario, all three teams are tied with 4 points apiece (point system), so head to head (Rule 1) is applied.  

    2. Since team 1 beat team 2, 2 team is eliminated from that round of seeding and team 1 and 3 remain tied.  

    3. To break the tie we move to least goals against (Rule 2).  Since team 1 has 8 goals against vs. team 3 who has 9, team 1 would take the 1st seed.

  5. For the 2nd seed we restart the process without team 1, leaving team 2 and 3 tied.  Since head to head does not apply we move to least goals against.  Since team 2 has 10 and team 3 has 9 goals against, team 3 wins the 2nd seed.  We repeat the process until all teams are seeded or eliminated.