College Hockey Realignment
The newest conference in NCAA men\’s Division I hockey finally has a name — the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.
Colorado College, Denver, Miami, Minnesota–Duluth, Nebraska–Omaha and North Dakota held a news conference today to announce the name.
The NCHC will start play in the fall of 2013, when the Big Ten will also begin playing the sport.
All the member schools in the two new leagues are defecting from the CCHA and WCHA except for Penn State, which is starting its program from scratch.
NMU, Michigan Tech and Lake Superior State are all conference rivals of the soon-to-depart NCHC teams, and they were left out of the talks about the new league.
NMU\’s Board of Trustees has a meeting tomorrow and Friday, and the future of the hockey program is one of the things they\’ll be discussing.
We should have more for you on what NMU plans to do coming up tomorrow night.
The athletic directors of the 5 remaining WCHA members, including Michigan Tech, are gathering for a meeting Friday to talk about that conference\’s future.