GRAND FORKS — The 2022 NCAA men’s hockey tournament should have been the last straw for neutral-site regionals.
It all started with a game between Minnesota State and Harvard in Albany, New York. The crowd was sparse enough to count by hand, in an aisle that seats more than 10,000 people. Limited crowds due to a pandemic were larger.
On the road, Minnesota faced West Michigan and the NCAA Frozen Four in Worcester, Massachusetts. This game drew the smaller crowd to watch the Gophers all season.
In most sports, big games have full stadiums and the most productive atmospheres. In school hockey, they have the worst.
This issue has been going on for more than a decade now with regional flops spanning from St. Paul to Cincinnati to South Bend to Toledo to Grand Rapids and more.
Yet every year, when the issue comes up at the meetings of the American Hockey Coaches Association in Naples, Florida, a portion of coaches and directors argue that it is acceptable, even necessary, and excuse what is happening.
You’ll hear:
“We just want to select bigger sites. “
“It wasn’t bad in (insert year here), so it’s okay. “
However, even the “good” years are not so good. Turnout has been so low that if a region holds 70% of the seats and gives some semblance of atmosphere, it is celebrated.
There’s also a big lesson that school hockey never learns: the next regional crisis is just around the corner. This is still the case.
I started writing articles on this topic ten years ago. Proponents of unbiased regional sites have cited the average number of years as evidence that the formula was working and improving. But the bugs kept popping up.
Ten years later, they still haven’t updated it. It’s time to try something new.
The NCAA has locked in neutral-site regionals through 2026. It has opened a portal for bidding for 2027 and 2028. The bidding portal closes next month, and if the NCAA Men’s Ice Hockey Committee doesn’t make a change this spring, they’ll award them in the early fall and we’ll be stuck with neutral sites for two more years.
The solution is complicated.
It’s about getting the regionals into the higher seed buildings.
Here’s how it would work: The 16-team field would be selected. The top eight would host on opening weekend — No. 1 vs. No. 16, No. 2 vs. No. 15, No. 3 vs. No. 14 and so on.
Next weekend the quarterfinals would be played again with the top seeds.
The cash would then be sent to a predetermined NCAA Frozen Four venue, where it would become a successful game of the men’s hockey tournament.
Some have advised that the number one seed host a four-team regional, but that doesn’t solve the problem. If the No. 1 seed is disappointed in the first round, enjoy a regional final again in an empty building. Imagine UConn plays at Arizona State in St. Cloud.
The concept of playing regionals at home is radical.
Everyone in school sports, with the exception of men’s basketball, plays it.
Women’s hockey, women’s basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball, lacrosse, football, and FCS football begin their tournaments at their home venues and move to a predetermined championship venue.
Even FBS football will start its College Football Playoff at home sites when it expands to a 12-team tournament next season.
So what’s stopping men’s hockey from doing the same?
Based on conversations with a dozen college hockey executives, some administrators and athletic trainers, it’s unlikely their teams will ever be in the top eight in pairs and have the capacity to host games.
Therefore, they would rather play in an empty arena in the middle of the school hockey desert than in a crowded arena on campus. This gives your teams the most productive chance to progress.
It’s smart for the players. It’s bad for the fans. It’s horrible for television.
This is a short-sighted attitude that makes no sense.
In the 10 years since school hockey was realigned in 2013-14, the 3 meetings with the lowest winning percentage are Atlantic Hockey, the Central Collegiate Hockey Association (formerly Western Collegiate Hockey Association), and the ECAC.
These leagues combined to form five NCAA Frozen Four groups at the time.
Four of those Frozen Four teams would have been top-four seeds and hosting throughout (Quinnipiac 2023 and 2016, Union 2014 and MSU-Mankato 2022). The fifth was Minnesota State-Mankato 2021, which would have hosted first round but not the quarterfinals.
Atlantic Hockey hasn’t had a Frozen Four team in that span.
Neutral-site regionals aren’t helping underdogs advance — nor should that be what’s important in building a tournament.
The debate should be centered on what’s best for the players, fans and the sport as a whole. The answer seems clear.
The No. 1 reason to change to home sites is to create the best game experience.
College hockey is played throughout the season in front of passionate crowds and in exclusive settings. Student sections and rowdy teams give school hockey a flavor of atmosphere that not even the NHL, American Hockey League, or any other youth league can replicate.
But we almost never see college hockey at it’s true peak.
Once the games are more important, they are removed from school hockey cities. Student sections are removed. Too often, they are played in front of half-empty buildings, some of which don’t even play hockey in the normal way. The atmospheres are bland. They don’t feel like they’re playing a great game.
“Obviously, the strength of school sports is the atmosphere,” said ESPN’s John Buccigross, a fan of the club’s regional championships. “In some cases, that’s what sets them apart from professional sports. Sometimes the intensity is the same, but school enthusiasts “have a tendency to be younger, which is noticeably louder, more engaged, and energetic. “
Local regional championships would electrify environments no matter where they are held.
In the last decade, 28 different teams would have hosted an NCAA tournament game — nearly half of men’s college hockey. Quinnipiac, Denver and Minnesota would have hosted the most (six). UND, Minnesota State, St. Cloud State and Michigan would have hosted five.
Other groups that have reportedly played playoff games on campus include Ferris State, Cornell, Clarkson, Union, UMass, Boston College, Penn State, UMass Lowell, and more. It’s a wide diversity of systems with other profiles, but all of them have generated incredible atmospheres.
Incidentally, this 2022 Minnesota-Western Michigan game for the Frozen Four would have been played at Lawson Ice Arena in Kalamazoo, one of the busiest venues for school hockey.
“Our goal must be to achieve 100 percent full slots at all venues,” said UND Sports Director Bill Chaves. “At the end of the day, I’m concerned that the environment that we’re seeing the normal season in is not likely to be replicated in regionals. “
Denver coach David Carle is a big fan of local regional championships. He says it’s not about which setup helps his team the most.
“We and Boston College have won more than others in the existing style,” Carle said. “It doesn’t come from the standpoint that it would be better for Denver. The existing style works for us. We’ve proven it. It’s all about what’s most productive for everyone and how our game takes it to the next level.
“I’m a young coach. I plan to do this for a long time. I want to see our game grow. I think we want to think outside the box, have uncomfortable conversations, and think through concepts on how to make sure you’re playing the most productive way and not getting attached to the prestige quo. “
Regional detractors of residential land will argue that NCAA games on residential land are too wonderful an advantage.
But the internal site setup is much fairer than the existing unbiased site setup, where groups can pseudo-host with flashy monetary offers.
Last season, if UND scored a goal against St. John’s. Cloud State in the NCHC Frozen Faceoff, and beat Colorado College the next night, a number one team (probably Quinnipiac) would have come to Fargo to play North Dakota. Would that have been fair? You are welcome.
Similar situations have happened.
Miami’s two best teams of the last 15 years took first place in 2011 and 2015.
In 2011, the RedHawks were sent to Manchester, New Hampshire to play in the first round of New Hampshire. In 2015, Miami was sent to Providence to play in Providence’s first round. The RedHawks lost both.
In 2019, the state of Minnesota won the most sensible spot, but was sent to Providence to face Providence in the first round. The Mavericks lost.
There’s little equity in that.
In the regional house setup, they would have to earn their place, and that would be dictated through the pairs classification, an objective formula known to everyone before the season begins.
“The Pairwise is a very well calculated mathematical equation,” Carle said. “It punishes you for losing at home, rewards you for winning on the road, rewards you for going on the road, rewards you for playing a hard schedule. . . we have this great system in front of us that we all know and trust. Let’s let that decide, so we’re all on the same playing ground, rather than DU or North Dakota buying a regional.”
The home-site regionals would also create additional interest throughout the regular season.
Not only would it highlight who is in the top 16 of the pairs rankings, but there would also be a race for the top 8 (first-round hosts) and the top 4 (guaranteed quarterfinal hosts). .
“Now, fans are coming to regular-season games knowing, ‘If we win tonight, we’re going to move into the top eight and we’re going to get an NCAA game,'” Carle said. “We love watching playoff races. We love watching home-ice races. Why would we shortchange ourselves of that drama and that intensity that can be brought from that and the excitement it adds to the fans?”
The locale is great for fans.
This requires traveling at very short notice. For Western fans, this means a plane flight.
Local regional championships would bring the biggest games to the campuses of teams that are having seasons and whose fans will be eager to see them play at home again. This would also allow students to attend.
“I think our fans deserve to see playoff hockey,” Carle said. “That’s where you build your next generation of fans.
“I think the net advantage is that a lot of markets are going to grow and expand if their fans are going to an NCAA tournament and having a good time. They will be much more likely to purchase subscriptions. That means more revenue. More are more eyes. That’s more ads. That’s what I mean by the development of the game. “
The other way to attract enthusiasts to the game is through television.
Earlier this month, ESPN recently signed a new eight-year deal to retain the broadcast rights to NCAA tournaments, adding men’s hockey, the 2031-32 season.
The NCAA tournament is broadcast nationally in Canada.
What do the casual enthusiasts watching the national school hockey tournament think when they see empty seats?What do Canada’s young players, who are recruited through Canada’s school hockey systems and primary youth systems, think about their exposure to the NCAA game?
By 2027, it’s conceivable that Canadian elementary school youth players will be eligible to play school hockey and that the wars between the NCAA and CHL will become even more heated. Does the NCAA need to get involved in those battles that feature mediocre vibes on Canadian television?
“How are we making college hockey relevant to the largest number of people?,” NCHC commissioner Heather Weems asked. “Where do we go to get the most impact? Where do we get the most buzz?”
The NCAA men’s hockey regionals could be compelling TV. But under the current setup, they’re not.
“I was at Eastern Washington for 11 years,” Chaves said. “Before that, I was at three hockey schools. Hockey wasn’t at the forefront in Eastern Washington, but I would watch during the NCAAs. If you see an arena that’s not packed, or it doesn’t have the environment you know college hockey has, I think that’s a problem.”
Buccigross is confident that ESPN can take care of the regions at home. This is the case with all other sports.
“We can get a truck anywhere we need to get one to,” Buccigross said. “I’ve done games at UConn, Princeton. . . we can do games at these places.”
There are five successful NCAA tournaments. Division I men’s hockey is one of them.
But regional headquarters would hurt the results. That would make the tournament even more profitable, according to a former committee member.
Michael Cross, Penn State’s former associate athletic director, who served on the committee from September 2019 to January 2023, studied the monetary forecasts for the house’s other regional championship models and brought his knowledge to the group.
In a style where the top eight host a first round and the top four host the quarterfinals, he estimates profits would grow between $1. 2 million and $2. 1 million per year.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that betting on regionals at home, on campus, would be particularly damaging,” said Cross, now a Southern Conference commissioner. “The gains that are left on the table are real. “
Cross said his study was not an initiative of the committee. He did it all on his own.
“This came with an honest confidence in what’s going to happen with the sport,” he said.
In the end, the first division men’s ice hockey committee wants at least four of its six members to agree to the change.
But the Committee often acts on the wishes of the majority of the coaches.
So, the push would likely have to happen with coaches, athletic directors and conference commissioners in Naples this April.
If the Division-I Men’s Ice Hockey Committee approves the change, it would then move to another NCAA committee that handles championships.
For some, there is now a chance to change.
“At first, the coaches didn’t need it,” one athletic director told the Herald. “There were demanding situations in some regionals and that created a scenario in which some coaches now think that it would be better to play in front of a full house and an enthusiastic audience, even if it is for the other team. “I think there’s been more positive movement in that direction than originally. “
One of the reasons many this time will be different is that 4 of the six college hockey meetings are now playing their playoffs entirely at home.
Many members of Atlantic Hockey and the CCHA are believed to be hesitant to travel to local regional championships for the NCAA tournament. But the two leagues that will now play in the NCAA tournament are based on local regional championships, so arguments that the home playoffs games are unfair and don’t hold water.
The leagues that are using home sites for conference tournaments have seen terrific results.
Minnesota’s 3M Arena in Mariucci has been packed for the last two games of the Big Ten name. Mankato and Houghton, Michigan, saw the same thing when the WCHA or CCHA name games.
Experiencing this may make the NCAA tournament worth following suit.
Hopefully. It’s time to try something different.