LAS VEGAS — Let the power schools have their football money and TV contracts.
The small schools still rule college hockey.
Denver — enrollment 6,619 and without a football team since 1961 — has its 11th NCAA Division I hockey championship, most of any school, after a thrilling 2-1 comeback win over Wisconsin before a crowd of 17,849 Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena.
“To me, we’re the thing that everybody wants,” said Denver coach David Carle, after winning his third NCAA title at age 36. “You want a smaller school who doesn’t have this behemoth budget and fan base and alumni base, to still be able to be successful. I think we’re the proof of concept that it’s still possible.”
Perhaps more impressive, it was the third straight championship — and seventh in eight years — for the NCHC which, before the addition of Arizona State in 2024, featured exactly zero institutions from the so-called “Power Four” athletic conferences.
Hockey is arguably the highest-profile sport at all of the NCHC schools (again excluding Arizona State, but even the Sun Devils get some pretty big crowds for hockey).
“We’re a smaller school, obviously we’re the top sport on campus, you might say,” said Rieger Lorenz, who’s third-period goal broke Denver’s scoring drought and tied the game 1-1 at 7:31. “You come to Denver, they care a lot about their hockey. It’s a super special place. I know all (of) us, once we stepped on campus, we never wanted to leave.”
The loss left the mighty Big Ten still in search of its first NCAA hockey title since its formation in 2013, the same year NCHC was born. Since the formation of both leagues, the NCHC boasts eight championships (North Dakota 2016, Minnesota Duluth 2018 and 2019, Western Michigan in 2025 and, of course, Denver in 2017, 2022, 2024 and 2026).
“The NCHC, a single-sport conference (where) no school is a big-time football school,” Carle said. “Do we love our hockey programs? Yes, absolutely. But we invest, have great leadership from our commissioner down.”
In fact, one would have to go all the way back to 2012 to find a championship won by a “power” school, when Boston College of Hockey East (and a primary member of the ACC) won its third title in five years. The 2000s were good years for power-conference schools, as Michigan State, Wisconsin and Minnesota (twice) won titles, though that was before the current Big Ten hockey era (Minnesota and Wisconsin were members of the WCHA and Michigan State the CCHA, but all three schools’ athletic programs have been longtime members of the Big Ten).
“I think we’re seeing that money doesn’t buy everything,” Carle said. “Bigness doesn’t win championships all the time, at least in our sport. Maybe that’s changing. Everybody seems to think it is, could or will. I will tell you we will do our damnedest in our conference and in Denver that it doesn’t happen that way.”
Other small-profile schools to win the NCAA hockey championship since 2000 include Yale (2013), Union (2014), Providence (2015), Massachusetts (2021) and Quinnipiac (2023). Of those five schools, only UMass has a D-1 FCS football program (which, incidentally, has gone 28-142 since moving up from FCS in 2012).