There were two hockey games this weekend.
Well, more than two, obviously. But there’s two in particular I want to discuss.
Michigan vs Denver. The reigning national champion vs the biggest brand in college hockey. #2 vs #1. The two programs with the most national championships. A rematch of this past spring’s thrilling, double-overtime Frozen Four semifinal in Las Vegas, which the Pioneers won, 4-3.
Now, surely, logic dictates that these games would’ve been all over sports networks.
No? Well, maybe at least one network would have picked them up? Or even a major streaming service, like ESPN+?
…sorry, what? The game wasn’t available ANYWHERE other than a paywalled, little-known streaming service called NCHC.tv? That can’t be right…right?
Welcome to the world of college hockey, my friends! Where one of America’s thrilling sporting products has next to zero cultural footprint, largely because hardly anyone outside select regions is aware it exists!
Just look at this weekend. There probably won’t be a bigger regular season matchup than the Wolverines’ Frozen Four rematch with Denver for the rest of the year. Yet it was buried deep in the mountain of sports TV coverage, behind a full college football slate, regular-season NHL, NBA preseason, European soccer, and probably a myriad of other sporting events I can’t name off the top of my head. Almost no one who was already aware of college hockey wouldn’t have even known it was taking place.
And this is usually what college hockey’s media ecosystem is like. The sport isn’t necessarily totally inaccessible on television — ESPN+, CBS, FS1, BTN and other major networks do occasionally pick up big games, and the Frozen Four is usually nationally televised. But the volume and quality of coverage is considerably smaller than that which follows college football or basketball.
And I know why that’s the case. Hockey in and of itself is a regional sport in the U.S and the majority of Division I universities don’t even carry varsity hockey. But I’m going to argue why it shouldn’t be, and why you should be watching college hockey — and why major streaming networks should be making it easier for you to do that.
For starters, the sport itself has a much smaller, more digestible scope. There are only 64 Division I men’s college hockey programs and 46 women’s programs. The NCAA men’s hockey tournament comprises 16 teams and the women’s tournament comprises 11. With a much smaller group of competitors, the stakes are higher and there’s less to keep track of.
The sport also has years of its own history and iconic rivalries to get anchored to, to rival those found in college football and basketball. The “Beanpot” of Boston schools is hotly contested every year, as are the Duel in the D matchups between Michigan and Michigan State, the Wolverines’ bouts with Minnesota, and the NCHC’s hotly contested quartet of powerhouses in the Pioneers, North Dakota, Western Michigan and Minnesota-Duluth. The Ivy League brings centuries of academic and athletic baggage to its high-level matchups. If you’re a neutral, the sport is overflowing with storylines.
The player quality is also incredibly high and has been growing. In the last few years as the NCAA has become a more viable pipeline for hockey talent, the number of future NHL superstars who passed through the Big Ten, Hockey East or NCHC has been growing. The likes of Connor Hellebuyck, Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, Kyle Connor, Adam Fox, Johnny Gaudreau, Macklin Celebrini and Jack Eichel all called the NCAA home for at least a year, and in recent memory, the likes of Porter Martone, Gavin McKenna and now prospective first overall pick Landon DuPont have taken the college pathway as well. On the women’s side, players like Hilary Knight, K.K. Harvey, Laila Edwards and Megan Keller all played college hockey.
Last but not least, it’s just the spectacle of it all. College hockey is fast-paced and high-scoring, and the NCAA Tournament is a thrilling, win-or-go-home festival of sport that often yields late-game heroics and unforgettable upsets. For anyone who finds themselves wanting more of the rich drama and storylines of March Madness, college hockey has just the thing.
As I’ve established, there’s clearly the ingredients for college hockey to become a phenomenon. The next step is to actively get the rest of the country excited about it — and that’s not going to happen unless you get people actively watching it. The power conferences and NCAA need to consider sitting down with ESPN, NBC, FOX or CBS, or maybe a few of them, and negotiating a comprehensive TV deal that would provide season-long coverage of college hockey from September to April.
Most of the country is barely aware college hockey is a sporting phenomenon, let alone actually having an opinion on it. Getting to watch marquee matchups — like this weekend’s Michigan-Denver series — would almost certainly turn the heads of sports fans who want high-stakes, high-quality and fast-paced action.
But I have to reiterate that until people actually get a chance to taste the action, they’re not going to develop an appetite for it. And thus, until widespread national broadcast coverage of matchups like this past weekend’s series is available, college hockey is destined to remain an untapped goldmine.