For the second straight season, the Big Six Hockey League will see significant changes before the first faceoff in 2017/18.

With the return of the Arcola/Kisbey Combines to the league after a one season leave-of-absence, nine towns will now have senior hockey in southeast Saskatchewan.

At the annual Big Six fall meeting in Oxbow on Sunday afternoon, the league voted to implement a 24-game regular season schedule for the upcoming season.

The most notable change - all nine teams will play in the same 'conference', scraping the two-division format used last season. Under this format, each team will face every other opponent three times for an equal, balanced schedule.

Each team will play at least one home and one away game against each other. Then, each team will host four other teams for an additional home game. Those four teams will alternate with the remaining four teams each season.

For example, in 2017/18, Oxbow will play an additional home game against Wawota/Carnduff/Yellow Grass/Redvers and Oxbow will play an additional road game against Midale/Bienfait/Arcola/Carlyle. Then, in 2018/19, Oxbow will play an additional home game against Midale/Bienfait/Arcola/Carlyle and Oxbow will play an additional road game against Wawota/Carnduff/Yellow Grass/Redvers.

The regular season will begin on Friday, November 3rd and finish no later than February 11th.

Under the new 'one division' format, and with each team playing each other an equal amount of times, there is more incentive than ever on the regular season.

No longer will every team in the Big Six Hockey League qualify for playoffs. The top eight teams in the standings at the end of the regular season will qualify, with the 9th place team missing the postseason.

With the expansion of the regular season by four games, the length of playoff rounds will also be adjusted from a (5-5-7) format to a (3-5-7) structure.

The quarterfinal round will see 1st play 8th, 2 takes on 7th, 3rd will face 6th, and 4th plays 5th.

The semi-final will see the highest-remaining seed face the lowest-remaining seed (Ex. 1st vs. 4th/2nd vs. 3rd) in a Best-of-5 series.

The Big Six Championship will see the two remaining teams play a Best-of-7 series.

The Wawota Flyers have won back-to-back Big Six titles after the Bienfait Coalers won five consecutive championships.

Another notable topic to come out of Sunday's fall meeting featured a discussion around implementing an 'import-player rule' that could be in place before the 2018/19 Big Six season.

At this time, the Big Six Hockey League is believed to be the only senior hockey league in Saskatchewan without a guideline for 'import players', who are players not considered as locals from the community.

While no system or rule was implemented at the fall meeting, the conversation produced a few ideas of what the rule would look like.

Possibilities include: allowing each team to have three (3) 'elite imports', which are players who previously played a Junior A level of hockey or higher. Allowing each team to have 'non-elite imports', which could vary from three (3) to unlimited. These players will have played no higher than Junior B level of hockey.

The overall goal of the rule would be to ensure that no team in the Big Six would be forced to fold due to not having enough players on the roster.

Each team will have until November 1st to send their ideas and recommendations to Big Six League President Rae Wright. Then the league will present a potential amendment to the Big Six constitution at the spring meeting in April that, if approved, would put the rule in place before the 2018/19 season.