Each week during the season, we look at the big events and big games around Division I men’s college hockey in Tuesday Morning Quarterback
Dan: A season that started in the first weekend of October — and possibly beyond, if you’re a fan of counting things like exhibitions and preseason practices — makes its final approach this week when the six Division I college hockey conferences crown champions. A journey that feels altogether too short while it extends through our winter is at its end.
Forgive my halcyon poetic emotion here, but it’s the one time of year that I allow hockey season to make me genuinely sad. As colleague Chris Lerch once said, the conference tournaments are more enjoyable than the NCAA tournament — even though the biggest prize is the national championship — because of the familiarity, the rivalries, and the kinship that’s associated with a season-long quest.
Nearly all of the weekend series include some form of chalk format, and two conferences have championship games established between the top two seeds in their respective tournaments. I’m probably more surprised by seeing those matchups — Bentley-Sacred Heart in Atlantic Hockey America and Minnesota State-St. Thomas in the CCHA — than I am by the teams that missed the final weekend.
Paula, one of those shockers came out of the Big Ten, where Ohio State — yep, Ohio State — advanced to play Michigan after beating Michigan State, 3-2, in overtime. Given everything that we’ve discussed this year, I don’t think the Buckeyes were ever on the radar, and now a sub-.500 team could crash the national tournament party and upend the entire seeding process.
Before we get into the national implications, let’s talk about what it means to have Ohio State heading north — I won’t dare mention the team’s name — for the title game.
Paula: I’d like to point out that our good friend Chris Lerch isn’t the only one who likes the conference tournaments more than the national tourney. It’s something I’m always saying because it’s 100 percent true: conference playoff time is the best hockey of the year.
Conference tournaments are so intense, played against familiar foes and for season-long bragging rights that can be lorded over those foes, and everyone wants to capture that flag. You bring up Ohio State heading to the Big Ten final, Dan, and that’s the best arguments conference tournaments as more meaningful than the national tournament.
Three of the four Big Ten teams that played in semifinal action this past weekend were among the top 10 teams in the NPI heading into the postseason. None of those teams were in any real NPI danger should they have lost. No. 3 Michigan State lost to Ohio State, who remains outside of the current NCAA field, and the Spartans didn’t drop. No. 10 Penn State was in zero danger in playing No. 1 Michigan.
Yet the Wolverines, Spartans and Nittany Lions all played their hearts out to get to a conference title game, because that’s the hardware they have in their immediate sights.
And Ohio State? Well, the Buckeyes knew going in that their only chance of getting into the NCAA tournament is to take the Big Ten playoff title and its autobid, but Ohio State is playing for more than that. The Buckeyes are a good team playing in a brutally tough conference and they know it.
During the regular season, Ohio State went 2-1-1 against Michigan State. The Buckeyes also went 2-2 (with one of those losses coming in overtime) against Wisconsin, the ranked opponent they bested in quarterfinal play. It doesn’t really surprise me that the Buckeyes are playing for the B1G title.
But they’re playing for more than that autobid. Ohio State hasn’t won a conference title since 2004, a game that also pitted an underdog Buckeye team against their arch-rival Wolverines. Ohio State is playing for pride. So is Michigan. This is as exciting as college hockey gets.
I would also argue that whoever emerges from the Big Ten isn’t crashing the NCAA party, no matter the record. Ohio State hasn’t beaten Michigan this season, so the Wolverines are the clear favorite. Having said that — and all I can about how tough this Big Ten conference is this year – I don’t think it would be fair to characterize any team that wins its way to the NCAA tournament by toppling the best teams in its conference as gate-crashing.
OK. Enough of that soapbox.
What was interesting to me was just how many underdogs prevailed in conference tourney play this past weekend and how many top-10 teams toppled.
Eliminated from their playoff tournaments (with their March 9 poll spots): No. 2 North Dakota, No. 3 Michigan, No. 4 Western Michigan, No. 5 Providence, No. 7 Quinnipiac, No. 10 Penn State.
Penn State, Western Michigan (vs. Denver) and North Dakota (vs. Minnesota Duluth) were ousted by other top-10 teams. Four top-10 teams that are regular-season title holders — Michigan State, Quinnipiac, Providence, North Dakota — are not playing for conference playoff titles. All but North Dakota were taken out by an unranked team.
It’s extraordinary.
Dan: I love that word — extraordinary — because the unranked teams have all played an extraordinary game along the way. Clarkson, for example, won a one-game playoff over a surging RPI squad that many, myself included, thought would win their first round matchup. Then came the quarterfinals, where the Golden Knights eliminated Quinnipiac by scoring three times in the final eight minutes of the game with two goals coming short-handed.
Even with the conversation about the Bobcats and their inability to win a conference tournament — a forced rite of passage because they haven’t won a Whitelaw Cup since 2016 despite finishing first in 2019, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 and 2026 — they hadn’t lost a single quarterfinal game since Brown swept them in Connecticut in 2019.
In Hockey East’s case, Merrimack had to rally from an early 1-0 deficit before winning in overtime over a top-seeded Providence team that previously swept the Warriors earlier in the season, but it throws a bit of anarchy into the TD Garden mixer alongside three teams that are notably fighting for their playoff lives. Like you mentioned above, Penn State, Western Michigan and North Dakota lost to top-10 teams, and Western and North Dakota are essentially locked into No. 1 seeds in the NCAA tournament. Facing a pure elimination scenario, we’re seeing teams rise to the occasion and fight for bids that might not otherwise exist. This, to me, is the spirit of what the postseason tournament is all about.
Of course, I’m used to that situation in Atlantic Hockey, but both of the teams playing on Saturday night had to survive their own form of tough challenges. In Sacred Heart’s case, a rally from a second game loss to salt away an amazing story at Robert Morris sent the Pioneers to Bentley for the conference championship series. Bentley, meanwhile, re-entered AHA in this week’s poll with the No. 20 spot after sweeping its biggest rival on home ice with the first game going to overtime.
Back to the original point about defying expectations. There are teams playing for a title game that might’ve expected to be here, and I’m sure we likewise projected certain teams to reach this point. But is there a team — ranked, unranked, seeded, low-seeded, anything in between — that would surprise you to win its league tournament this weekend?
Paula: Yes. Ohio State and Merrimack.
At the risk of being too repetitive, I would be surprised to see Ohio State emerge as B1G playoff champs. As I said, the Wolverines have beaten the Buckeyes all four meetings this year, and Michigan is 9-2-1 vs. Ohio State the last three seasons. Michigan’s lost at home just three times this season.
Massachusetts has had a really solid second half and swept Merrimack in mid-January. Merrimack has struggled against other ranked Hockey East teams, too, going 2-7-0 (at quick glance) against ranked conference opponents before the Warriors’ win over Providence.
While higher seeds and ranked teams losing would be deemed upsets, I can see lower seeds emerging from every other conference.
In Atlantic Hockey, Sacred Heart went 2-1-1 against Bentley in the regular season and without their bad first half, the Pioneers might have challenged Bentley for the regular season title.
In the CCHA, St. Thomas went 2-1-0 against Minnesota State this season, and the Tommies have the 17th best scoring margin nationally with the 10th best offense. They did struggle down the stretch, going 1-3-2 in February, but they can take the Mavericks.
In the ECAC, Clarkson eliminated Dartmouth last season, but the Big Green went 1-0-1 against the Golden Knights during the regular season. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Clarkson take Dartmouth because Clarkson really struggled to find consistency in the second half after that spectacular first half.
In the NCHC, Minnesota Duluth lost two one-goal regular season games to Denver, including one in overtime. The Bulldogs have played in 10 overtime games this season, with a record of 5-4-1 in those contests. The Pioneers are 14-6-1 at home, but the Bulldogs are 12-6-0 on the road. Denver rides a six-game win streak into the weekend.
What about you, Dan? What’s your take on favorites versus underdogs?
Dan: We all know I won’t pick against Bentley, but I’m going to allow myself to enjoy that playing Sacred Heart in a championship game is a far cry from the days when the conference outposts at the Milford Ice Pavilion and the fabled JAR cast both programs on a runway miles longer than their conference foes. I remember their constant head-to-head matchups in the first round and grew an immense respect for the brotherhood of the league’s eastern programs, so seeing them in a title game in my 17th year as a broadcaster at Bentley warms the cockles of my heart.
I’m personally eyeballing both UMass and Princeton as teams to watch. Neither reached their respective conference championship weekends with the fanfare of other teams in their conference, but you’d be hard-pressed to find teams with stronger candidacies for the final weekend of a postseason. Out in Amherst, goaltender Michael Hrabal’s playing out of his mind as of late, and I have a hard time seeing either UConn or BC matching up with the Minutemen on the back end. I think the harder case is Merrimack, which is inconsistent but has a very good top end. I’d actually put the Warriors up against either the Huskies or Eagles in the first game, but playing UMass in the first round is a lot different than playing a UMass-Lowell team that gave Merrimack two wins ahead of the Hockey East tournament.
Princeton, meanwhile, beat Cornell before nailing Harvard and tying Dartmouth ahead of a shootout win over the last two weeks of the season. A sweep over Union got this team into position to play for a championship at Lake Placid, and I don’t think Clarkson is going to advance to a championship game. As a result, get the Tigers past the Big Red, and someone’s bubble is going to break, even if it would be fun to watch the Golden Knights throw the NPI into a full-blown meltdown as the No. 16 team.
From a favorite’s standpoint, I think Michigan is good enough to torture Ohio State, and I genuinely love Minnesota-Duluth. My first Frozen Four came when Scott Sandelin won his second straight national championship. Hard for me to ever pick against the Bulldogs when they occupy that spot in my memory banks.
One last point is that I hope the atmosphere is genuinely electric at every game.
Paula: Princeton! Holy cats — no pun intended — I forgot about Princeton!
The Tigers and Big Red split two good games in the regular season and I expect nothing less this weekend. While it took Cornell three games to get past Harvard, after that 3-1 loss in the opening game, the Big Red outscored Harvard 9-2 in the final two. Sorry, Tigers, but I would be surprised by a Cornell loss.
I’ve watched a lot of college hockey this season and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this may be the best I’ve seen in 31 years. We’ve gone into some reasons for that, like the expansion of the talent pool via OHL and just the way some leagues seem to have taken big steps forward this season, like the ECAC and B1G Hockey.
There won’t be any power outages this weekend, Dan – unless there are literal power outages, and that’s something I won’t put past Old Man Winter on his way out the door. Every game will be end-to-end, board-to-board electric hockey and fans will keep it charged until the final buzzer.