Michigan State’s Mikey DeAngelo, right, tries to keep the puck away from Ohio State’s Nathan McBrayer during the Big 10 tournament championship hockey game held at Munn Ice Arena in East Lansing on March 22. The Spartans emerged victorious 4-3 in double overtime. (Photo courtesy Lansing State Journal Facebook site)

MADISON, Wis. — The Big Ten has announced that its annual conference men’s hockey tournament will change its format and now be completed in two weeks.

Taking effect in March, the league announced Wednesday that the opening-round quarterfinals will now be held midweek, specifically on Wednesday, March 11, with winners and the No. 1 seed advancing to the semifinals three days later on Saturday, March 14, to be followed by the championship game the weekend after that, sometime from Friday through Sunday, March 20-22.

The seven-team league will continue to have all its teams qualify for the tourney, with No. 1 getting a bye and the next three seeds hosting the bottom three seeds in the quarterfinals like it has in the past.

But where the opening round had been a best-of-three series, it is now a single game. In addition, the semifinals will be played just three days after the opening round instead of a full week later with the quarterfinals being just a single game.

In past years as it will be now, the semifinals and finals are single games with all three rounds held at campus sites.

The compressed format of the tournament will allow the Big Ten to extend its regular season one week later, listed for this upcoming season the final series to be held on Thursday and Friday, March 5-6.

It is also thought to allow teams that don’t make the semifinals but still have NCAA tournament aspirations less down time before the national tourney begins.

The Big Ten first held a tournament after the formation of its hockey league in 2014, but all six teams at the time played at a single site in one weekend using a three-day, single-elimination format. That year, Wisconsin defeated Ohio State 5-4 in overtime in St. Paul, Minnesota, for the inaugural championship.

In 2018, the conference changed to the three-weekend format that was employed through this year. The only exception was the COVID-19-affected 2021 tourney that used a setup similar to the original format.

Story contents based on a University of Wisconsin hockey media email about the news. Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee’s email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.