By Bill Turianski on 7 December 2016; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.
Links…
Conferences…Division I in ice hockey.
Teams, etc…Big Ten Conference hockey (en.wikipedia.org).
Conference-maps for NCAA Division I (aka D1) men’s ice hockey
(Note: already-posted D1-hockey conference maps are linked-to, below.)
I am making a location-map for each of the 6 D1-hockey conferences, which are…
∙Atlantic Hockey Association (11 teams/est. 1998-99/ zero titles).
∙Big Ten Conference hockey (6 teams [7-teams in 2017-18]/est. 2013-14/ 23 titles won amongst its six teams).
∙ECAC Hockey (12 teams/est. 1961-62/ 7 titles won amongst its twelve teams).
∙Hockey East Association (12 teams [11 teams in 2017-18]/est. 1984-85/ 13 titles won amongst its twelve teams).
∙National Collegiate Hockey Conference (aka NCHC) (8 teams/est. 2013-14/ 18 titles won amongst its eight teams).
∙Western Collegiate Hockey Association (aka WCHA) (10 teams/est. 1951-52/ 8 titles won amongst its ten teams).
…
The location-map here shows the 6-team (and soon-to-be-7-team) Big Ten Conference hockey.
Big Ten hockey has teams spread through 5 states in the Northeast/Upper Midwest: 2 teams from Michigan (Michigan and Michigan State), 1 team from Minnesota (Minnesota), 1 team from Wisconsin (Wisconsin), 1 team from Ohio (Ohio State), and 1 team from Pennsylvania (Penn State). Next season – 2017-18 – Notre Dame (of Notre Dame, Indiana) will join Big Ten Conference hockey to make it a 7-team conference. So I have included Notre Dame on the map, with a captions describing their future inclusion into Big Ten hockey. I also added Notre Dame’s attendance data. {Also see this, Notre Dame Fighting Irish men’s ice hockey.}
The map…
The map is based on my recently-posted 60-team NCAA D1-hockey location-map {see it here}. The Big Ten hockey teams’ crests, colors and arena-locations are shown on the map. Each team’s color-circle, which radiates out from their location-dot, is sized to represent average attendance…the larger the circle, the higher the team’s average attendance. Crowd-size-rank within the 60-team-D1 is also noted – by the number next to the team-name on the map and on the attendance-list. (North Dakota is the highest-drawing D1-hockey team, currently.)
The chart at the right side of the map page shows attendance data. Along with average attendances of the Big Ten hockey teams (2015-16 home regular season figures), arena sizes and percent-capacities are listed. Also shown, below the attendance data, is a list showing all D1-hockey titles which have been won by teams that currently play in the conference (in this case, all titles won by teams in Big Ten Conference hockey). Finally, at the lower-right of the map-page is a chart showing all D1-hockey teams’ titles and Frozen Four appearances (39 of the 60 D1-hockey teams). (Michigan has the most D1-hockey titles, but the Wolverines have not won a hockey title in eighteen years (last in 1998); meanwhile, with North Dakota winning the title last season (2015-16), they have moved past Denver up to second-most D1-hockey titles, with 8. The D1-hockey team with the most Frozen Four appearances is the Boston College Eagles, with 25.)
…
Division I NCAA hockey was instituted in 1948.
(Division I NCAA hockey titles, 1948 to 2015-16/ 69 titles.)
The inclusion of Penn State as a D1-hockey team (who debuted in 2012-13), led to the 2011-2013-era realignment in D1-hockey. The shakeup in D1-hockey conferences occurred in much the same way (and in nearly the same time-period) as the recent realignments in NCAA D1-football and in NCAA D1-basketball. After the dust had settled in D1-hockey, there was 6 conferences instead of 5, and one conference was dissolved – the Central Collegiate Hockey Associaition (CCHA). (The CCHA existed as a D1-hockey conference from 1973-2013.) (Note: there is one D1-hockey team that is currently an Independent, newcomers Arizona State.)
Since 2013-14, there are two new conferences in D1-hockey:
∙Big Ten Conference hockey,
∙National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC).
…
In D1-hockey these days, the Big Ten is the 800-pound gorilla in the room…
The creation of Big Ten Conference hockey has upset some within the D1-college-hockey community. They fear that the days of small schools being able to compete in D1-hockey may be soon over. And it is not just that small schools have been able to be in, and compete well, in D1-hockey. It is the fact that, going back many decades, small schools within D1-hockey have actually been able to win D1 titles. Like how all three D1-hockey schools from the Upper Peninsula in Michigan (Michigan Tech, Northern Michigan, and Lake Superior State) were able to win D1-hockey titles in the time period from the 1960s up until the mid-1990s. And more recently, like how tiny Union College (of Schenectedy, NY) won the 2014 D1-hockey title. Despite Union College being a school with an enrollment of only around 2,240 undergraduates, and despite the Union College Dutchmen having a D1-hockey team without a single scholarship-player.
Here an excerpt from an article from 2014 from the College Hockey News site, ‘From the get go, there’s been a worry that the formation of the Big Ten would allow the rich to get richer, allow recruiting budgets to go even higher, increase the distance between the big guy and little guy.’ (quote from Stop Complaining – Conference Tournaments’ Attendance, Setup Not Worthy of Scorn by Adam Woden at collegehockeynews.com).
Big Ten hockey did something recently that was by most accounts pretty tone-deaf. They made, unilaterally, a proposal to the NCAA, to toughen the D1-hockey rules for older-aged players’ eligibility, which would end up hurting the smaller schools. (You can read about that in the article at the link below.) That action by Big Ten hockey is being perceived by some as perhaps being a foreshadowing of the big schools throwing their weight around in D1-hockey, to the detriment of the smaller D1-hockey schools. Here is an article from July 2016, from SB Nation, on the Big Ten’s entrance into D1-hockey and how it has some worried (note: the comments section at the link below is also worth reading, as several commenters there raise some interesting points)…The Fabled Big Ten Hockey Conference Is Ruffling Feathers Did you know that many hockey fans outside of the Big Ten are not happy about the conference’s existence? – (by Chris Taylor at blackshoediaries.com).
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Thanks to all at the following links…
-Thanks to AMK1211 for blank map of USA, ‘File:Blank US Map with borders.svg”>File:Blank US Map with borders.svg‘ (commons.wikimedia.org).
-Thanks to Two Hearted River at en.wikipedia.org/[each teams' page at Wikipedia], for small segments of jersey illustrations of several teams (Wisconsin, Minnesota-Duluth, Cornell, Maine, Minnesota State, Vermont, Yale, UMass, Western Michigan, Canisius College, American International), such as at File:ECAC-Uniform-Cornell.png.
-Thanks to USCHO site for attendance data, Men’s Division I Hockey Attendance: 2015-2016 (uscho.com).
