2021 NCAA Women's Hockey Championship Field Set

The eight-team field is set for the 2021 NCAA Division I Women's Ice Hockey Championship. The seeds/first-round match-ups are as follows, with conference affiliation in parentheses:

No. 8 Robert Morris * (CHA) vs. No. 1 Northeastern * (Hockey East)

No. 7 Providence (Hockey East) vs. No. 2 Wisconsin * (WCHA)

No. 6 Boston College (Hockey East) vs. No. 3 Ohio State (WCHA)

No. 5 Minnesota-Duluth (WCHA) vs. No. 4 Colgate * (ECAC Hockey)

* Earned automatic NCAA tournament berth by winning conference tournament championship 

The entire tournament will be contested on March 15-20 at the Erie Insurance Arena in Erie, PA, with the Frozen Four on March 18 (semifinals) and March 20 (championship game) to be televised live on the ESPN networks.

Last year's NCAA championship was canceled by COVID-19. Wisconsin, the 2019 NCAA champion, and Minnesota-Duluth have both earned five previous national championships apiece, the only schools in this year's field to have won an NCAA title.

Alabama-Huntsville Drops Men's NCAA Hockey Program

The death knell has sounded once again for the University of Alabama-Huntsville men’s hockey program—and this time it looks to be permanent.

Citing COVID-19/financial difficulties, UAH administration announced today that it was discontinuing the Chargers hockeyprogram, effective immediately, along with the men’s and women’s tennis teams. Scholarships will be honored if players choose to remain at UAH, while they will also be allowed to transfer to other schools without penalty.

Charger Hockey had faced the chopping block before, when the program was shut down temporarily in the fall of 2012 before being revived soon after.

The program, which was an independent at the time after the College Hockey America conference disbanded, later joined the Western Collegiate Hockey Association where it spent its final seven seasons, finishing 48-181-24 overall. The “Hockey Capital of the South” now joins the likes of Fairfield, Findlay, Illinois-Chicago, Iona, Kent State and Wayne State among the modern-era schools that dropped NCAA Division I hockey in the past few decades.

UAH went 2-26-6 for the 2019-20 season, and finished last in the WCHA. The Chargers’ last game ever was a 4-1 home loss to Bowling Green at VBC Propst Arena in Huntsville on Feb. 29. The program’s last victory came on Feb. 1, when the Chargers defeated visiting Michigan Tech, 3-1.

The Chargers began life as a club program in 1979, winning three national club championships, and then had a brief foray in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics before joining the NCAA in 1985 as a Division II independent. After two seasons at that level, UAH moved up to NCAA Division I for five seasons, also as an independent, before dropping back down to Division II, where they won NCAA national championships in 1996 and 1998 while also recording two runner-up finishes.

After NCAA Division II hockey was discontinued in 1998, the Chargers returned to Division I as an independent, where they went 21-5-1 in 1998-99 before joining the CHA for 11 years. In that span they won league regular-season championships in 2001 and 2003, and claimed two CHA postseason titles in 2007 and 2010 that also earned them automatic berths to the NCAA Division I tournament. The Chargers fell by a goal both times, to Notre Dame in double overtime in Grand Rapids, Mich., the first time, and then to Miami (Ohio) three years later in Fort Wayne, Ind. The CHA itself then dissolved in 2010, leaving the Chargers without a conference home.

UAH then spent the next three years as an NCAA Division I independent before joining the WCHA. The program’s final overall record at the NCAA varsity level was 456-570-82 (.449), with Doug Ross winning a school-record 376 NCAA games in all as head coach from 1985 to 2007. His son, Jared, played in 22 career NHL games with the Philadelphia Flyers, and scored 73 goals in four seasons (2001-2005) at UAH while playing for his father. The Chargers' most famous hockey alumnus is undoubtedly goaltender Cam Talbot, who spent three years in Huntsville (2007-2010) and has since gone on to backstop 314 NHL regular-season games with the New York Rangers, Edmonton, Philadelphia and Calgary, in which he has recorded 150 career wins along with 22 shutouts.  

Along with Alaska Anchorage and Alaska (Fairbanks), UAH was slated to be one of just three schools left in the WCHA after the 2020-21 campaign as Bemidji State, Bowling Green, Ferris State, Lake Superior State, Michigan Tech, Minnesota State and Northern Michigan were due to withdraw from the conference to form the new Central Collegiate Hockey Association.

ADDENDUM: The Chargers got a reprieve of at least one season after a week-long GoFundMe fundraising campaign that ended on May 29 netted over $500,000 in online donations.

Boston College Heads 2016 NCAA Women's Hockey Tournament Field

Boston College is the top seed in the eight-team 2016 NCAA Division I Women’s Ice Hockey Tournament that will begin on Saturday.

No. 1 nationally-ranked BC will host fellow Hockey East school and sixth-ranked Northeastern, while seventh-ranked Princeton will travel to No. 3 Minnesota. Fifth-seeded Clarkson, the 2014 NCAA champion, will visit No. 4 Quinnipiac, while College Hockey America champion Mercyhurst will travel to four-time NCAA champion and second-ranked Wisconsin.

BC is 38-0-0 overall this season and just won the Hockey East championship with a 5-1 victory over Green Line rival Boston University after the Eagles posted a 24-0-0 mark in league regular-season play. Northeastern (28-8-1) is making its first national tournament appearance since the NCAA began recognizing a women’s Division I championship in 2004, although the Huskies were long an eastern powerhouse along with Providence and New Hampshire prior to the formation of the Women’s Hockey East Association and the formally-recognized NCAA Division I level.

Princeton (22-8-2) will visit Minnesota (32-4-1) for the second time in 10 years in NCAA Tournament play. The Tigers fell to the host Gophers, 4-0, in 2006 in their only previous national invitation. Minnesota, the defending national champion, is playing in its eighth straight national tournament, and has won three of the last four NCAA titles, and six overall.

Clarkson (29-4-5) is in the NCAAs for the fourth straight season, while Quinnipiac (30-2-5) is making its inaugural NCAA Tournament appearance. The game will be a rematch of this year’s ECAC Championship, which was won by Quinnipiac’s Bobcats, 1-0, over the Golden Knights.

Mercyhurst (19-10-5), which edged Syracuse, 4-3, in overtime in the CHA championship game, is back in the NCAAs for the first time since 2014, and the 10th time in 11 seasons despite the Lakers posting their lowest single-season victory total since 2000-01. Wisconsin, which has finished third nationally the past two seasons, last won a national title in 2011, which was two years after the Badgers defeated the Lakers in the NCAA title game in Boston. Wisconsin also blanked Minnesota, 1-0, in this year’s WCHA championship game.

The four winners this weekend will convene at the NCAA Frozen Four in Durham, New Hampshire on March 18-20.

Penn State Unveils New Sweaters

Penn State University is just weeks away from unveiling its new men's and women's NCAA hockey teams on ice. Earlier this week, both squads unveiled their new white home and blue road sweaters, as depicted online at USCHO.com.

The overall design for both teams is generally the same, except the women's team will carry a College Hockey America patch on theirs, below the left shoulder, as they will begin CHA play this season. The men's team will compete as an independent in 2012-13 before moving to the new Big Ten Conference a year from now with Michigan, Michigan State, Minnesota, Ohio State and Wisconsin.

Both team's sweaters will feature a Nike logo below the right shoulder, and traditional hockey lacing in front below the neck.It's a nice, clean look, with the school's blue and white colors complimenting each other well. There's solid wide striping featured on both the sleeves and waist, and the well-known Nittany Lion head logo situated on the front.

For Penn State men's coach Guy Gadowsky, who originally comes from a pro background, it's similar to his previous two college stops. Alaska Fairbanks had the UAF logo on the front of its sweaters during his tenure there, while Princeton displayed the university shield while he was behind the bench at Baker Rink and actually kept the design last season.

The PSU women's team and coach Josh Brandwene will make their varsity debut first, when the Nittany Lions visit Vermont on Oct. 6-7. The men's team will swing into action a week later at home against American International College on Oct. 12-13.

Niagara Drops Women's Ice Hockey

Another Division I women's hockey program has fallen by the wayside. Niagara University in Lewiston, N.Y. announced on Monday that it will discontinue women's ice hockey as a varsity sport.

Niagara refers to the move as a "restructuring" of the athletic department—but essentially, women's outdoor track and field is replacing women's ice hockey on the university roster. Niagara hockey student-athletes who wish to remain at the school will have their scholarships honored, or else they can transfer to another Division I school without having to endure the customary one-year waiting period for transfers.

The Purple Eagles, who finished 10-16-8 overall in 2011-12, played their final game in a 3-2 loss at Robert Morris on March 2 in the College Hockey America tournament semifinals. Freshman forward Kayla Raniwsky scored Niagara's final varsity goal.

Niagara fashioned an overall mark of 179-240-57 (.436) in 15 Division I campaigns, four in the ECAC and 11 in the CHA, after getting started back in 1998-99. The Purple Eagles, who enjoyed their best record in 2001-02 as a member of the ECAC East when they went 26-8-2 overall and made it to the NCAA Frozen Four, now join Wayne State, Findlay and MIT in the annals of defunct women's hockey programs.