Quote:
Originally Posted by GreenLantern
I am always so confused how NCAA works, I understand you have divisions, but it is also broken into conferences?
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As of this season, there are six conferences in NCAA Division I Hockey (previously, there were five, but they realigned the conferences this year). 59 schools have Division I men's hockey programs. There's also Division III, but it's a lower level of competition and Div I and III teams don't play against each other.
Every Div I school plays a mixed schedule, with some Conference games and some non-Conference games, plus they participate in tournaments throughout the season, which can be against Conference opponents, but not count as Conference games.
At the end of the season, each Conference has its own Championship tournament with the rankings based on just the Conference games played. Each Conference Champion receives an automatic place in the National Championship tournament, plus there are 10 additional ad hoc invitees into the tournament to bring the total to 16.
Those 16 teams are sorted into four groups of four for the Regional qualifiers. The Regionals are sorted based on both quality of competition and geographic considerations (which doesn't always line up, last year, Yale played in the West Regional and Denver played in the Northeast Regional).
The winners of the four regionals then play in the Frozen Four to determine the national champion. You can become national champion without winning your own conference (like Yale did last year).