ECAC Hockey gets four teams into NCAA men’s hockey tournament

COLLEGE HOCKEY – ECAC Hockey will be well represented at the NCAA men’s hockey tournament starting Thursday.

The ECACH will have four teams — Colgate, Cornell, Harvard and Quinnipiac — vying for the conference’s first national title since Union won in 2014.

Quinnipiac, the ECACH regular-season champions, are the No. 2 overall seed. The Bobcats will play in the Bridgeport, Connecticut, Regional and face Merrimack at 5:30 p.m. Friday.

The first game in that regional will be Harvard taking on Ohio State at 2 p.m.

Colgate, which won its first ECACH tournament title since 1990 when it edged Harvard 3-2 on Saturday, will play Michigan at 8:30 p.m. Friday in the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Regional. The teams met in the 2000 East Regional in Albany, a game that went to overtime and was mired in controversy. Colgate’s Andy McDonald appeared to have scored in OT, but the goal was waved off, and the officials refused to request a video review. Michigan won 4-3 on Geoff Koch’s goal at 12:44 of OT.

Cornell is the other ECACH team to make it to the NCAA tournament. The Big Red will play Denver, from the National Collegiate Hockey Conference, at 5:30 p.m. in the Manchester, New Hampshire, Regional.

The last time the ECACH had four teams in the NCAA tournament was in 2019, when Clarkson, Cornell, Harvard and Quinnipiac made it.

Harvard is the last team to reach the Frozen Four. The Crimson lost to Minnesota Duluth in the 2017 semifinals.

Quinnipiac is the last team to reach the championship game. The Bobcats lost to North Dakota in the 2016 final. They also lost to New Haven-area rival Yale in the 2013 championship game.

Contact Ken Schott by email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @slapschotts.

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