The tournament reserves the right to combine age groups dependent on the total number of teams in a particular age division. Teams will be notified when groups are combined. It is likely that a decision to combine groups will not be made until approximately one month prior to the event. Each team is assigned three games in the initial group play. Groups that have three teams will play two games within their own group and one game against a team from another group.
All games do count in the group standings for determining playoff placement.
In the event of a tie among more than two teams, once a tie is broken by the above system, and if ties among remaining teams still must be decided, those ties would be broken by starting again from the top of the tie-breaking procedure. In the event that a wildcard team must be selected for the playoff rounds, the above procedure will be used. Teams will be pre-seeded into playoff brackets based on their standings in group play. Bye rounds are randomly selected. If a wildcard team must be selected for the playoff rounds, that team will not be assigned to play against the winner of its own division in the first playoff round, when possible.