The Arizona State men’s hockey team is set to achieve a long-sought goal. The 8-year-old Division I program will join the National Collegiate Hockey Conference beginning in the 2024-25 season. The move means that ASU will play its final independent season in 2023-24.

Joining a conference has long been a goal for ASU. The Sun Devils applied to join the NCHC (so did Minnesota State-Mankato) in the 2016 offseason — one year after going Division I — but the request was turned down.

ASU had considered remaining independent, and it also considered joining the Big Ten where it played an entire season on the road due to COVID-19. But the geography of the NCHC was considered more favorable in the final analysis. So was the fact that the NCHC is a hockey-only conference, meaning the focus and resources go to one sport instead of getting divided among many, as they are in the Big Ten.

“First and foremost, it was what was in the best interest of our student-athlete experience; what was best for their welfare, and I’m talking about the whole picture,” ASU Vice President for University Athletics Ray Anderson said. “You want elite competition, you want to make sure we’re in a conference that is academically strong, but we also wanted to make sure that the competition level also played into their scheduling. We’re academics and so the geography; the proximity along with those other things just made the most sense for us. And then very frankly, you want a conference that wants you equally badly.”

Anderson said the process of joining the NCHC goes all the way back to that failed bid in 2016 when ASU was coming off a 5-22-2 season.

“Very reasonably and very understandably so, there may have been some trepidation about what our real future was,” Anderson said. “We were playing in Oceanside Ice Arena; 750, 800 seats. We were coming off a very successful couple of club decades, but people really didn’t understand the depth and the level of our commitment. We had to prove our case.”

The NCHC was also in its infancy when ASU approached it in 2016. The league, which is headquartered in Colorado Springs, formed before the 2013–14 season as a combination of six previous members of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association and two from the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. Two years later, it wasn’t ready to consider expansion.

In the ensuing seven years, the NCHS has won five national championships while ASU has made the NCAA Tournament once (2018-19) and was on track to make it a second time before COVID-19 canceled the 2019-20 season. The program has also moved into state-of-the-art Mullett Arena where the NHL’s Arizona Coyotes also play. All of those factors greatly improved ASU’s profile and attractiveness. 

“With the opening of Mullett Arena last fall another box was ticked and the conversation between the NCHC and ASU became more serious as we jointly discussed membership opportunities,” said NCHC commissioner Heather Weems, who added that the vote in favor of admitting ASU was 8-0. “Arizona State University is recognized nationally for its innovation and academic quality. It also brings a strong national brand, robust alumni base and growing southwest hockey market to the NCHC. I know this addition will make our conference stronger.”

Greg Powers, who has been the program’s coach since its club days, labeled this latest move the last major brick in the program’s foundation; one that will allow it to take another step forward in its evolution. 

“You’re always in the fight when you’re in a league and that’s what we’re most excited for — and we’re most excited that our student-athletes are going to experience it,” Powers said. “We would not be here if not for all the players that believed this day could happen and came here and built it.” 

The NCHC includes Denver University, Colorado College, North Dakota, Nebraska Omaha, Miami (Ohio), Minnesota Duluth, St. Cloud State and Western Michigan. 

Although the conference is adding a ninth team, it will continue to employ a 24-game conference schedule for each team in 2024-25. However, a new three-year rotation and scheduling model will be implemented beginning with the 2024-25 season.

The new schedule model and rotation consists of three, three-team pods based on geography with teams guaranteed to play home-and-away series against the other two teams in their pod every season (eight games). The three-team pods are: Arizona State, Colorado College and Denver; Minnesota Duluth, North Dakota and St. Cloud State; and Miami, Omaha and Western Michigan.

The remaining 16 conference games will be played against the six non-pod teams, with four opponents only being played in one series (eight games), home or away, and two non-pod opponents being played in both home and away series (eight games). The non-pod teams that are played either once or twice in a series will rotate over three seasons. The complete 2024-25 schedule will be released next spring.

The NCHC’s postseason format with nine teams for the 2024-25 season and beyond is still being evaluated and will be finalized and announced in the coming months.

Denver and ASU have faced each other six times in the past four seasons. Pioneers coach David Carle welcomed the addition.

“I think it’s a really good fit,” Carle said. “They’re obviously a large brand in the West and it’s a really good trip for our players, but also our fans and our alumni to go down into that market. Their games are on Pac-12 Network so it gives us an exposure to another audience, and when you look at what they’ve been able to do as an independent program, they’re clearly doing something right as a program. We want like-minded institutions that care a lot about hockey.”

Carle also sees benefit to further growing the game in the West.

“There’s three NHL teams in California. We see what Vegas is doing. Obviously, Arizona has the Coyotes, and Seattle added a team so the two last expansion teams have been in the West in the National Hockey League,” he said. “There’s more and more players coming from the western United States. The game is growing at an extremely high level. Getting them in our conference is a net benefit to the growth of the game and the growth of college hockey.”

Top photo of Greg Powers courtesy of Sun Devil Athletics

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