Best Hockey Schools

bclintonk
Tue, 18 Aug 2009 18:46:30 +0000

monydad:

“Hah! Cornell hasn’t won a national championship since 1970.”

The OP’s question was, and I quote,

“What are the best schools where hockey is a pretty big deal?”

It was not “which schools are best in hockey?”

Granted the two are usually correlated.



No, I don’t think they’re correlated. Lots of top academic schools don’t give a hoot about hockey. And lots of top hockey schools don’t give a hoot about academics. I tried to give a list of schools that excel in both. But I take your point that’s not what the OP asked. If the criterion is 1) best schools where 2) hockey is a big deal (regardless of actual quality of the hockey program), then I’d say:


Harvard
Cornell
Michigan
Middlebury (8 Division III championships in last 15 years)
Amherst (recent strength in hockey)
Williams
Notre Dame (recent strength in hockey)
Wisconsin
Boston College




barrons:

Well, the UW women have one three of the last 4 NCAA championships and lost in the tourney the other year.



Yes, and the Minnesota women have won 2 of the last 6 titles and lost the title game a third time, and were the first in the country to have their own arena—Wisconsin, I believe, was second, but in any case followed the Minnesota women in that regard. But the truly dominant women’s ice hockey team is Minnesota-Duluth, which has won 4 national titles on the last 9 years, and lost in the title game in a 5th attempt over that period.

Look, I don’t mean to take anything away from Wisconsin hockey. It’s terrific, both in the men’s and women’s game. My only point is that they’re pretty evenly matched with Minnesota. Between the two of them, and taking into account both the men’s and women’s game, Minnesota and Wisconsin are probably the two most hockey-crazed schools in the country. No one else at their level. And I say this as a Michigan alum. Hockey’s big there but it pales in comparison to football, and women’s hockey just isn’t on the map. Not so at Wisconsin and Minnesota, where Big Ten football is a warm-up to the hockey season.