College ice hockey
College ice hockey is played principally in the United States and Canada, though leagues exist outside North America.
While Johns Hopkins' program would cease for 90 years after 1898,[4] Yale has served as a bedrock of college hockey ever since, playing continually including through the Great Depression and two world wars.
[5] Yale's 125-year continuous streak was broken for the 2020-21 season, when all Ivy League winter sports were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
[1] Within ten years all eight schools that would eventually comprise the Ivy League had played their first game as well as several other nearby teams.
A lack of available ice was the primary concern for most schools as to whether they should start a program or continue supporting an existing team but that did not detract from the enthusiasm of the students.
[6] For at least the first 25 years of intercollegiate play the teams used a 7-on-7 format, a typical setup for turn of the century ice hockey.
By the 1921–22 season college hockey adopted the increasingly more common six–a–side format with the abandonment of the second center/rover position and the two point men being renamed as 'defensemen'.
[9] Occasionally games were not able to be played entirely at one time so the teams would arrange to meet at a later date to finish the match.
[10] Overtime after a tie did not always occur, as ice times at public skating rinks were constrained, but even when teams were able to play extra frames the rules were somewhat flexible; because there were no lights illuminating the ponds, games could only be played while the sun was shining and in the winter months dusk came quickly.
Teams near to public skating rinks would be able to hold their games at venues where ice conditions could be ensured but at the start, with so few available, some programs came up with novel solutions.
One such idea came from Harvard University who, after completing construction of their football stadium in 1904, decided to erect two open-air rinks on the field for the team to use.
As the weather warmed in the 1930s and 40s many of these teams would be forced to decide whether they were willing to financially support their ice hockey programs or not.
Army, for instance, had Smith Rink built in 1930 while Cornell struggled with the ice on Beebe Lake until after World War II.
Because the war ended in November 1918 many of the teams returned to the ice for the 1918–19 season and, while the game continued to grow around New England, an interesting development happened shortly after the armistice was signed.
The game continued to expand west with the addition of Gonzaga, USC, UCLA and others,[15] however, none of the Pacific-coast teams would make it to the 1950s.
There were notable exceptions such as Yale and Dartmouth, who continued to play through the duration of the war, but many teams returned to the ice for an abbreviated 1945–46 season.
With a much larger student body and a resulting influx in cash, colleges were more able to afford to support an ice hockey team.
By 1947, college ice hockey was still a regional sport, being localized in the northeast and northern Midwest (with a few exceptions) but despite the low number of teams playing, the NCAA finally instituted a national tournament.
Partially due to a lack of competition, Michigan was invited to participate in each of the first ten tournaments and won six National Championships in that time.
[18][19] The decision was made after a class action was filed on behalf of a player who was declared ineligible after having played two exhibition games in the OHL when he was 16 years old.
[22] One hundred thirty-eight colleges and universities sponsor men's ice hockey in the NCAA's three divisions.
With the addition of the Big Ten hockey conference for the 2013–14 season, the tournament now features 6 automatic qualifiers, and 10 at-large bids.
[26] The CCHA, the revival of a league that had operated from 1971 to 2013 before folding in the aftermath of major conference realignment, initially consisted of seven schools that had previously competed in the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.
[32] This reprieve proved temporary, as the school and its hockey supporters agreed that the continuation of the sport beyond 2020–21 would be contingent on finding a new conference home; when no conference move materialized, the hockey program was dropped again (although UAH officially called the move a "suspension").
The most recent additions to D-I men's ice hockey are the aforementioned Augustana and Robert Morris.
[34] In May 2021, Tennessee State University announced that it was conducting a feasibility study on the possible addition of varsity men's and women's hockey teams.
Robert Morris resumed National Collegiate play in 2023–24, returning to CHA[25][40] after having dropped men's and women's hockey following the 2020–21 season.
University hockey teams in Canada compete in leagues as part of U Sports, the national governing body for Canadian university athletics (in Canadian English, the term "college" is reserved for schools that would be called "junior", "community", or "technical" colleges in the U.S.).
[41] In 2015, a group of member schools in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) began working to add the sport to the organization.
The recruiting process, rules and regulations, and player eligibility standards parallel that of NCAA Division III.
