Hockey East

The Hockey East Association, also known as Hockey East, is a college ice hockey conference in New England. It is part of the NCAA's Division I and focuses only on hockey.

Hockey East started in 1984 for men's hockey. Most of its schools left another group called ECAC Hockey because they disagreed with rules from the Ivy League schools. Later, in 2002, they started a women's league too.

Over the years, a few schools from outside New England joined for short times. For example, the University of Notre Dame Fighting Irish joined in 2013 but left in 2018. The University of Connecticut joined in 2014, and the College of the Holy Cross began playing women's hockey in Hockey East in 2018.

Members

There are 12 schools in Hockey East. Eleven of these schools have men's teams, and ten have women's teams.

The group began in 1984 when most of the schools joined together after some disagreements.

Conference records

Men's

These are the teams' scores when they play against other teams in the Hockey East conference.

Men's Championships

The Hockey East Championship Game has been held in Boston since 1987. It started at the Boston Garden and moved to the TD Garden in 1996. Before Boston, the first two championships were in Providence, Rhode Island at the Providence Civic Center.

The semifinal and final games happen on two nights in mid-March at TD Garden. The quarterfinal games are the weekend before, and the opening round is a few days earlier. Eight teams make it to the quarterfinals. In the opening round, the lower-ranked teams play each other, and then the winners move on to face higher-ranked teams in the quarterfinals.

Women's Championships

Main article: List of Hockey East Women's Ice Hockey Tournament champions

The Hockey East Championship for women's ice hockey started in 2003. It was held in Boston until 2007. After that, the tournament was held in different places each year. Some of these places were Matthews Arena, Walter Brown Arena, Whittemore Center, Mark Edward Freitas Ice Forum, Hyannis, Massachusetts, and Lawler Arena at Merrimack College in North Andover, Massachusetts.

Championships, Frozen Fours, and NCAA Tournament Appearances

Rivalries

Boston College, Boston University, and Northeastern play in the yearly Beanpot tournament with Harvard from ECAC Hockey.

With Notre Dame joining Hockey East, the old rivalry between Boston College and Notre Dame, called the Holy War on Ice, is now a conference game. These two schools also compete in other sports because they are both part of the Atlantic Coast Conference for most sports (though Notre Dame's football team plays independently, they still face Boston College regularly in football). Maine and New Hampshire have a rivalry called "The Border War," and Providence and UConn also have a rivalry that continues from their basketball games.

Conference arenas

Awards

Men's

At the end of each season, coaches from Hockey East teams vote for players to be on three All-Conference Teams: first team, second team, and rookie team. They also choose up to six players to receive special awards. There is a Most Valuable Player award for the conference tournament, and a tournament all-star team.

Women's

The top player each year gets the Cammi Granato Award, which started in 2009. Some Hockey East players have also won the NCAA Division I Women's Ice Hockey Player of the year award, known as the Patty Kazmaier Award.

Television rights

Since the 2019–2020 season, Hockey East games have been shown on NESN. People in the United States and Canada can also watch them on Paramount+ and SportsLive.

Before that, games were shown on NBCSN up until the 2016 Hockey East Championship. Earlier, they were on American Sports Network before it closed.

On April 6, 2022, Hockey East made a deal with ESPN and ESPN+ for six years. This will bring games to ESPN’s TV and online services. Each season will have 300 games on ESPN+, with 3 games shown on ESPNU.