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March 25, 2015

2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament – map of the 16 qualifying teams in the 2015 tournament, with 2013-14 attendances, plus all-time Division I ice hockey titles list (including all-time Frozen Four appearances).

Filed under: Hockey,NCAA, ice hockey — admin @ 4:44 pm

http://billsportsmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/ncaa_ice-hockey_2015-mens-division-i-tournament_post_i_.gif
2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament – map of the 16 qualifying teams, with 2013-14 attendances, with chart of all-time D-1 ice hockey titles list (including all-time Frozen Four appearances)



Links…
PreviewsTen things to watch in the NCAA men’s hockey tournament (by Eric Sorenson at espn.go.com).
…From USCHO.com, 16 numbers: A look at some facts and figures on the 2015 NCAA tournament (by Alex Faust at uscho.com).
Qualifying teams/Bracket2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament/Qualifying teams/Tournament bracket (en.wikipedia.org).
Schedule2015 D-I men’s ice hockey NCAA tournament schedule and results (espn.go.com).
Best site for in-game scoresncaa.com/scoreboard/icehockey-men/d1.

    2015 NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament

By Bill Turianski on 25 March 2015; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.com.
#1 seeds, etc
#1 seed this year are the Minnesota State Mavericks, who are from Mankato, MN, which is in the far southern part of the state, where there is more of a plains-state feel to it. Mankato has a metro-area population of only around 98,000 {2013 estimate}, and the Mavericks hockey team plays in a 4,800-capaity arena in the city’s downtown area. Minnesota State wear purple-black-and-yellow. In 1980, the Minnesota State Mavericks men’s ice hockey team won the D-2 title as an Independent (or non-conference-aligned) team. Since 1997-98, they have competed in D-1. The second-ranked #1 seed are the 7-time champions the University of North Dakota, of Grand Forks, ND. The kelly-green-and-black-clad University of North Dakota teams are the only Division I teams in the United States without a nickname (see the article that I linked to, from Slate.com, at the foot of this post, for more on this). The UND hockey team plays in a 12,400-capacity stadium, which is rather large for D-1 college hockey…all the more so because Grand Forks is a pretty small city: it is the 351st-largest city in the USA, with a metro-area of only about 100,000. The third-ranked #1 seed are the red-and-white Boston University Terriers. Boston U., who are 5-time champions (last in 2009), are one of three teams from Boston in the tournament this year – the other two Boston-based teams who qualified are 5-time winners Boston College Eagles and the Harvard Crimson (D-1 champions in 1989). The fourth-ranked #1 seed are the red-and-white-clad Miami RedHawks (aka Miami of Ohio), whose best tournament showing was as the losing finalist in 2009. The RedHawks are from Oxford, OH (population of only around 28,000), which is 31 miles north of Cincinnati. The 2015 D-1 men’s hockey tournament starts at 2 pm ET on Fri. March 27 (see full schedule at the third link in the first paragraph above).

Eight teams are returning from last year’s tournament…Denver, North Dakota, St. Cloud State, Minnesota State, Minnesota, Quinnipiac, Providence, Boston College.
Six teams are making it three-tournaments-in-a-row (since 2013)…Denver, North Dakota, St. Cloud State, Minnesota State, Minnesota, Boston College.
Four teams have a 4-tournament-streak (since 2012)…Denver, North Dakota, Minnesota, Boston College.
Boston College has the third-longest current streak at 6 straight tournaments (since 2010).
Denver has the second-longest current streak at 8 straight tournaments (since 2008).
North Dakota has the longest current streak, with 13 consecutive tournament appearances (since 2003) [but North Dakota has not won the title since 2000].

In this year’s tournament, the team with the all-time least tournament appearances (2 appearances), is a team from my hometown of Rochester, NY – Rochester Institute of Technology. RIT won a D-2 and a D-3 hockey title (in the mid-1980s), and the men’s team has been a D-1 team since 2005-06. The Tigers’ best season was 2010, when they made it to the Frozen Four. The school just built a larger arena for the team, going from a 2,100-seat arena to a 4,300-seat arena, the Gene Polisseni Center, on-campus in Henrietta, NY.

2015 Frozen Four schedule
The Frozen Four will take place 2 weeks later (Thur. Apr.9-Sat. Apr.11th), at the TD Garden (capacity 17,565) in Boston, Massachusetts. Semifinal games on Thursday April 9, and the Final is on Saturday April 11th at 7:30 pm ET.

Last season’s final
Union College won last year’s [2014] Frozen Four, their first D-1 men’s ice hockey title, (but the Dutchmen did not qualify for the 2015 tournament). The final last year was a 7-4 thriller, with Union College (a Division I team since only 1991), beating perennial powerhouse Minnesota, before a sell-out crowd at the Wells Fargo Center, in Philadelphia (attendance: 18,742). The score was 5-4 to Union with about 4 minutes to go, when Union scored two unanswered goals, {see this report + 1-minute highlights video, from the NHL.com site from April 13, 2014, Union beats Minnesota 7-4 to win NCAA hockey title (by Adam Kimelman at nhl.com).

On the map page
In the long horizontal chart at the top-center-right of the map page, the 16 teams in the 2015 tournament are listed by average attendance (2013-14 home regular season attendance), along with conference, location [of arena], arena seated capacity, 2013-14 percent-capacity, Division I men’s ice hockey titles won (with last title noted), Frozen Four appearances (with last one noted), and all-time Division I Tournament appearances (the Minnesota Golden Gophers have the most D-I tournament appearances, with 36).

Teams in the 2015 tournament, by conference
I have shown team-distribution-by-conference in the 6 boxes at the upper-left-hand side of the map page. In each of these 6 Division I men’s ice hockey conferences boxes, the date of conference-establishment is listed along with the number of teams in the conference. Also listed in those 6 boxes are total Divison I men’s ice hockey titles won by conference members (with most recent title-winner noted). Then the teams who made this tournament [2015] are listed. Last season [2014], the conference with the most teams in the tournament was Hockey East, with 5 teams (Hockey East has 3 teams in it this year…Boston College, Boston University, Providence). This season, the conference that has put the most teams in the tournament is the two-year-old National Collegiate Hockey Conference. The NCHC was established in 2013-14, from 6 previous members of the WCHA (Colorado College, Denver, Miami of Ohio, Minnesota-Duluth, Nebraska-Omaha, and North Dakota), and 2 teams that left the now-defunct CCHA (St. Cloud State and Western Michigan). The conference is spread from the north-central Ohio Valley across the Upper Midwest through the Northern Great Plains to the foothills of the Rockies.

Here are the 8 NCHA teams, with the six 2015-tournament-qualifiers shown in bold…
2 teams from Colorado (Denver, Colorado College),
1 team from Nebraska (Omaha),
1 team from North Dakota (North Dakota),
2 teams from Minnesota (Duluth, St. Cloud State),
1 team from Michigan (Western Michigan),
1 team from Ohio (Miami).

The D-I Men’s Hockey Titles & Frozen Four chart
The D-I Men’s Hockey Titles & Frozen Four chart (at the left on the map page) was put together via the two sources linked to below. Michigan has the most D-I titles in men’s hockey, with 9 (but the Wolverines have not won it since 1998); second-most titles is 7 (a tie between Denver [last in 2005] and North Dakota [last in 2000]); third-most titles is 6, won by Wisconsin [last in 2006].

Sources,
For titles in the titles/Frozen Four chart at the far right-hand side of the map page, I used this list, List of NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Tournament champions/Team titles. For all-time Frozen Four appearances I used this list, List of NCAA Men’s Division I Frozen Four appearances by school (en.wikipedia.org at [college hockey]).

Attendances are from NCAA via USCHO.com site, Men’s Division I Hockey Attendance: 2013-2014 (uscho.com). [Note: the excellent USCHO.com is on my blogroll.]

Here is an interesting article on North Dakota’s situation with respect to the hockey team’s former nickname of the Fighting Sioux…
From Slate.com, from Jan 12, 2015, by James I. Bowie, The University of North Dakota Dropped Its Offensive Nickname. How Does the School Replace It?.

___

Thanks to
For the blank map of USA, thanks to AMK1211 at File:Blank US Map with borders.svg (commons.wikimedia.org).
Thanks to Two Hearted River at en.wikipedia for several of the team logos (8 jersey illustrations) on the map page [ such as File:WCHA-Uniform-MTU.png ]. These illustrations can be found at many of the D-I teams’ Wikipedia pages, such as Minnesota State Mavericks men’s ice hockey.
Thanks to North Dakota Men’s Hockey facebook page for that logo.
Thanks to Chris Creamer’s SportLogos.net, for several of the logos used on the map and the charts.
Thanks to the contributors at College ice hockey/Division I (en.wikipedia.org).

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