Krause: Division 1A hockey format change is a welcome one

Idle chatter while counting all of Tom Brady’s money:When the MIAA Division 1A boys hockey tournament commences Sunday at the Tsongas Arena in Lowell, it’ll be under a new format. Instead of a round-robin format in which each team in a pool plays the other three – which often resulted in Byzantine tiebreakers to determine the participants in the crossover game – teams instead will pair off and play a best-of-three series.Hockey East does it the same way. If you win your series, you advance to the semifinals. If you lose, you go home. So what that basically comes down to is a double-elimination format dressed up in a different set of clothes.It’s good for a number of reasons. First, it takes the whole seeding process more seriously. The top seeds play the bottom seeds a potential of three times, which means that a lower seed really has to accomplish something to advance. Second, as we said before, it eliminates the need for getting the calculator out after the round-robin in the event of ties; and third, it eliminates meaningless games. There’s nothing more depressing than consolation games (having watched Northeastern play in enough of them, I can truly speak to this) and if you’ve got no shot to advance, why risk injury to anyone just so you can play a game that means nothing?Are there bad aspects? Sure. Under the old format, if you run up against a team that just has your number, you only have to play it once. You get a second chance to play someone else.St. John’s Prep only lost two games this year ? and one of them was to Central Catholic. Guess who The Prep plays in the best-of-three?The Saugus boys simply lost to a better basketball team Tuesday night, and there is no shame in that. The game, I think, began to turn in the second quarter as Saugus amassed a 17-point lead (33-16). The Sachems had a chance to bury Wayland – the fourth seed in Division 3 North – so that no matter what the Warriors did, it wouldn’t be enough.But instead, Wayland whittled that lead down to 11 (which would seem substantial enough until you consider what could have been). The Sachems couldn’t separate in the third quarter (Wayland actually gained four points) so that the seven-point (50-43) lead going into the fourth quarter was already looking tenuous.Then, the roof fell in.It isn’t as if this hasn’t happened before in sports ? that the underdog team just can’t quite put the favorite away.Saugus got where it got in that game because Joe Bertrand was en fuego in the first half. In the second half, Wayland had three players similarly en fuego.Still, in a game that featured the Dual County League/Small MVP (Jaleel Bell), the best player on the floor Tuesday was Saugus’ Shane Ripley. He scored 26 points, and was flawless from the foul line.I’ll bet neither Tom Grassa nor Scott Lewis (Classical/Beverly boys basketball coaches, respectively) were happy last week when the pairings came out and they saw the two teams playing each other. Coaches from the same league are rarely happy when that happens.But I’ll also bet Grassa is just a tad happier today, as the Rams won the game.We play bracketology in high school too. And bracketology dictates that the English girls, if they make the regional final, will have certainly earned the trip, because both Central Catholic and Andover – perennial powers in Division 1 girls – are on the Bulldogs’ side of the bracket.Of course, if there’s anyone in coaching who would more embrace that challenge than Freddie Hogan, I don’t know who it would be.The Dogs will tap off tonight in the first step of that quest against Saugus’ Leo Burke and the Medford Mustangs.Whatever else you can (and have) said about Brady, he gets it in ways many athletes don’t. It doesn’t matter whether his wife is a bajillionaire. Athletes compare salaries to measure respect and status. None of them need it.So Brady wasn’t just secure in the knowledge that between he and Giselle they can somehow eke out a living without whatever money – and in wha