Typically the tournament is scheduled across two separate weekends in mid-march with quarterfinal games hosted on campus locations, while the final four games are played at the Xcel Energy Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

However, on February 8, 2021, NCHC announced that the tournament would be played entirely in Grand Forks.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, changes to the traditional tournament format were made for this season.

8 according to their final conference standing, with a tiebreaker system used to seed teams with an identical number of points accumulated.

The winners of the quarterfinals round series will advance to the NCHC Frozen Faceoff.