Welcome back to Bracketology.
Between now and March 22 — Selection Sunday for the men’s Division I NCAA Ice Hockey Championship — we’ll provide in this space an up-to-date prediction of the 16-team NCAA field, seeded into regionals according to the guidelines set out by the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Committee.
As always, we’re doing this using the NCAA Power Index (NPI), not the PairWise.
We’re also at the point in the season where non-conference results keep quietly shaping the national picture, even as league play takes over most schedules. As of Monday, Jan. 26, the interconference standings still look like this: NCHC (.677) and the Big Ten (.669) out front, Hockey East (.591) solidly in the next tier, then ECAC (.460), CCHA (.410), and Atlantic Hockey America (.391). And if you zoom in on the most recent stretch (since Dec. 29), Hockey East has been the hottest non-league conference (13-4-1), with the NCHC right behind (12-5-1). Those numbers don’t build the bracket by themselves, but they absolutely help explain why teams move the way they do week-to-week.
Now, we need the field. For the purposes of this exercise, we’ll keep it simple and use the top of the NPI as our backbone — but with the same caveat as recent weeks: every conference needs representation. Right now, the top 16 does not include an Atlantic Hockey America team, so we’ll take the top AHA team in the NPI as the conference representative. This week, that’s Bentley (26th in the NPI).
So our 16-team field (using overall seeds 1-16) is: Michigan, Michigan State, North Dakota, Penn State, Western Michigan, Minnesota Duluth, Providence, Quinnipiac, Cornell, Wisconsin, St. Thomas, Dartmouth, Denver, Boston College, Connecticut, and Bentley.
Now we build the bracket using bracket integrity.
The initial four pods are always:
1-8-9-16
2-7-10-15
3-6-11-14
4-5-12-13
So, on the first pass, that gives us:
1 Michigan / 8 Quinnipiac / 9 Cornell / 16 Bentley
2 Michigan State / 7 Providence / 10 Wisconsin / 15 Connecticut
3 North Dakota / 6 Minnesota Duluth / 11 St. Thomas / 14 Boston College
4 Penn State / 5 Western Michigan / 12 Dartmouth / 13 Denver
Now we ask the first question the committee asks: do we have any same-conference first-round matchups?
And yes — right away, we do. In the 1-8-9-16 pod, Quinnipiac and Cornell would be paired in the first round. Both are ECAC teams, and the committee does everything it can to avoid intra-conference first-round games.
So we need one clean fix that doesn’t create another problem elsewhere. This is where the committee gets picky: the best swaps are the ones that solve the issue, stay within the seed band, and don’t introduce a new same-league matchup in another pod.
The simplest fix is to swap Cornell and Wisconsin within the 9–12 band. It’s a minimal adjustment, it removes the ECAC-first-round issue immediately, and it doesn’t create another same-conference first-round matchup in the process.
After that adjustment, the pods become:
1 Michigan / 8 Quinnipiac / 9 Wisconsin / 16 Bentley
2 Michigan State / 7 Providence / 10 Cornell / 15 Connecticut
3 North Dakota / 6 Minnesota Duluth / 11 St. Thomas / 14 Boston College
4 Penn State / 5 Western Michigan / 12 Dartmouth / 13 Denver
Now we can move to site placement. Same process as always: are any regional hosts in the field, and if so, they’re tied to their hosted site.
This year’s regional hosts are Holy Cross in Worcester, Union in Albany, Omaha in Sioux Falls, and Denver in Loveland. Only one of those teams is in the field this week: Denver.
So that means we have exactly one hard lock: Denver plays in Loveland. And because Denver is part of the 4-5-12-13 pod, that entire pod goes with it.
So we place Penn State / Western Michigan / Dartmouth / Denver in Loveland.
Now we have three pods left to assign to Worcester, Albany, and Sioux Falls — and now we get to the part that makes Bracketology fun, because there are several “reasonable” choices, and the committee priorities come into play.
Let’s start with the east. Worcester and Albany are the two eastern sites, and the 2-7-10-15 pod helps with three eastern teams: Michigan State / Providence / Cornell / Connecticut . That pod makes a lot of sense in Worcester, the larger of the two buildings, where you’d like to help the building as much as possible.
So Worcester gets: Michigan State / Providence / Cornell / Connecticut.
That leaves two pods for Albany and Sioux Falls.
Albany is a natural geographic fit for the 1 pod this week. Michigan is the top overall seed, Quinnipiac and Bentley are both in the region footprint, and Wisconsin is a big-name program that will draw neutrals. It’s not perfect and probably delivers the biggest attendance question mark, but it’s clean, coherent, and it’s exactly the kind of placement that the committee often prefers when it can make an eastern site feel “regional.”
So Albany gets: Michigan / Quinnipiac / Wisconsin / Bentley.
Which leaves Sioux Falls with the remaining pod — and it’s a really interesting one: North Dakota / Minnesota Duluth / St. Thomas / Boston College.
We lost Augustana from this week’s field, but if you’re Sioux Falls, you’re still thrilled about North Dakota. Minnesota Duluth brings a traveling fan base, and St. Thomas is a natural “close to home” program in that building. Boston College is the outlier geographically, but you can’t always build four perfect travel pods, and the upside is that Sioux Falls becomes a true event regional.
So Sioux Falls gets: North Dakota / Minnesota Duluth / St. Thomas / Boston College.
That gives us our projected bracket as of Wednesday, January 28:
Loveland Region
1. Penn State
2. Western Michigan
3. Dartmouth
4. Denver
Sioux Falls Region
1. North Dakota
2. Minnesota Duluth
3. Cornell
4. Boston College
Albany Region
1. Michigan
2. Quinnipiac
3. Wisconsin
4. Bentley
Worcester Region
1. Michigan State
2. Providence
3. St. Thomas
4. Connecticut
Last in: Boston College
Last out: Augustana
And the next few teams hovering right behind the cut are very capable of making this uncomfortable quickly — St. Cloud State (17), Minnesota State (18), Harvard (19), and Bowling Green (20) are all sitting close enough that one strong weekend (and one bad one from a team in the 13–16 range) can flip a bracket and force another set of compromises.
The biggest thing to keep an eye on this week isn’t just “who wins,” but where the wins come. One big league-vs-league weekend can move NPI in ways that don’t feel intuitive until you look up and realize the bubble has reshuffled again.