[3] WCHA member teams won a record 38 men's NCAA hockey championships, most recently in 2011 by the Minnesota Duluth Bulldogs.

The WIHL disbanded in 1958 after Minnesota and the three Michigan schools withdrew in protest of Colorado College, Denver and North Dakota recruiting overage Canadians.

[2] The current Western Collegiate Hockey Association was founded for the 1959–60 season after the former WIHL schools concluded that the region needed a strong league.

[5] In 2006, WCHA member Wisconsin was the first school to capture both the men's and women's Division I ice hockey championships in the same season.

[9] In response to the creation of the Big Ten men's hockey conference, Denver, Colorado College, North Dakota, Nebraska-Omaha, Minnesota Duluth, and St.

Cloud State left the WCHA to join Miami University and Western Michigan of the CCHA to create the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.

[10][11] Facing membership at 4 teams for the 2013–14 season, the WCHA conference added one of its former members, Northern Michigan of the CCHA, on July 15, 2011.

[22] However, UAH subsequently dropped hockey effective immediately on May 22, 2020, due to the financial impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic on its athletic department.

[23] On May 29, 2020, UAH President Darren Dawson announced that men's hockey would return for the 2020–21 season after more than $750,000 in private contributions were made in the week prior.

[26] The University of Alaska Board of Regents offered the hockey team a chance at reinstatement in September if they could raise 2 seasons worth of expenses, approximately $3 million, by February 2021.

[27] The men's WCHA would fold after the 2020–21 season,[3] but the women's WCHA announced a further expansion effective in 2021–22 with the arrival of St. Thomas, a Twin Cities school that received NCAA approval to directly transition from Division III to Division I. St. Thomas had been expelled from its longtime D-III home of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference effective with the end of the 2020–21 school year due to perceptions by many members that it had grown too strong for that conference in multiple sports.