When it is awarded to either Minnesota State or Bemidji State on Saturday night in Mankato, the Mason Cup will be at the end of its long journey back to its rightful place in the hands of the champions of the CCHA tournament.
The CCHA’s championship trophy was one of the first things CCHA commissioner Don Lucia wanted to bring back when the conference reformed in 2021 – for good reason. He just had to figure out where it was.
“At first, we figured it was in Miami, but then we did some digging and realized Notre Dame still had it,” Lucia said in a phone interview on Monday.
Notre Dame won the last CCHA conference title before conference realignment in 2013 and had kept it somewhere in their hockey facilities ever since.
To get the trophy back, Bowling Green athletic director Bob Moosbrugger made a pit stop in South Bend last spring after going to some BG athletic events and took the trophy home in his car. After sending it away for some much-needed upgrading and fixing, the trophy is back and ready to be presented to the winners this weekend.
“It’s one of those trophies like the MacNaughton Cup. It means something because it’s named after Ron Mason. And he was certainly one of the legends of our game. So I’m looking forward to it, and it’s going to be an honor for me to present that trophy on Saturday night.”
Lucia, who was a former coach at Minnesota, Colorado College and Alaska Fairbanks, knows firsthand how passionate Mason was about growing the game of college hockey and helping out emerging programs. Lucia said his Nanooks teams got into the old CCHA in the early 90s primarily because of Mason’s influence.
“Ron will probably be on the Mount Rushmore of college coaches, not only for the success he had as a coach but he was a great ambassador to college hockey. He was a proponent of growth and he was a proponent of helping emerging programs along,” Lucia said. “I’m sure if Ron had put his foot down and said we want no part of this, we wouldn’t have gotten into the CCHA, but he was the exact opposite. He was pro-expansion, and I think he passed that on (to other coaches).”
That’s why it’s fitting that this new group of CCHA schools decided to keep Mason’s namesake championship trophy. Almost all of them are schools where hockey is the No. 1 sport but don’t have the resources that the big-name programs do. They’ve had to fight for their conference affiliations and even, in some instances, to keep their programs afloat.
Lucia was named the CCHA’s commissioner in the summer of 2020 – almost a year before the conference officially started play in fall of 2021. Lots of preparation went into the inaugural CCHA season and in his eyes, it paid off.
“I thought that since several of the teams were together before, and then with St. Thomas coming in, everybody had a good feel for each other as a group, the ADs had worked together in the past, so I think that was helpful in overall making this a very successful season, certainly on the ice and off the ice as well,” Lucia said.
On the ice, Lucia noted that the league has the possibility to get three teams (MSU, BSU and Michigan Tech) into the NCAA tournament depending on what happens in this weekend’s title game. But aside from those three teams, Lucia pointed out that the parity of the new league, from top to bottom, is much improved.
“The middle was like we expected. We look at the preseason forecasts and, you know, Tech and Minnesota State were there, and then there was that bunch in the middle with Bemidji, Lake State, Northern and Bowling Green and the first round of playoffs kind of dictated how highly competitive it was,” he said. “And I think that squeeze in the middle probably ultimately costs maybe another team from being in a really good spot to make the NCAAs.”
One of the stated goals of the new conference was to have more teams in the top 20 of the Pairwise at the end of the season competing for at-large bids. This year, Minnesota State (1) and Michigan Tech (12) are the only two teams that will finish in the top 20. Northern Michigan (26), Bemidji State (29), Lake Superior (32) and Bowling Green (34) were much lower.
What’s the solution for that? It’s twofold: More separation in the middle of the conference standings combined with better nonconference play.
“I think that there has to be a little bit more separation within the league itself. This year, you have a lot of teams in the middle that were on .500 in the league,” Lucia said. “You do need some teams to separate where instead of two or three teams in the middle that are all around .500 in the league, you need some teams that are three, four games over .500, and then do well nonconference. And we all know the importance of nonconference for the pairwise.
“You know, the old adage is, ‘Schedule the best teams you can beat.’ So you want to make sure that you have a delicate balance of playing good teams, but not over-scheduling in your conference based on where you project your team to be maybe a year or two down the line.”
The CCHA actually did OK in nonconference play this year at 28-32-4, but they were only 2-12-1 against the Big Ten (the 9-12-1 mark against the NCHC was solid).
“Like it or not, the NCHC and the Big Ten are in our footprint. So come the end of the year, you’ve got to win some of those games if you want to be an NCAA tournament team,” Lucia said.
Longtime rivals clash in final
One of the big things for Lucia about joining the CCHA as commissioner is that, as a former coach, he already had great working relationships and friendships with most of the coaches in the league.
So when he awards the Mason Cup this weekend to either Minnesota State’s Mike Hastings or Bemidji State’s Tom Serratore, he’ll be giving the trophy to someone he’s known for a long time. Lucia coached against both when the Mavericks and the Beavers were in the WCHA.
“With Tom and the way they play, they’re built for the playoffs. And there’s no doubt in my mind, they have the ability to go in and upset Minnesota State this weekend provided that, like we all need this time of the year, you’ve got to have good goaltending and specialty teams, you have to be disciplined. You have to get a couple timely goals,” Lucia said. “Obviously, Minnesota State’s the favorite because of what they’ve been able to accomplish all year, I think they’ve only lost one home game all season long. But it’s not a best-of-three, it’s a one-game shot, so if I’m Bemidji, I feel a lot better going in there, having to win just one instead of a best-of-three scenario.”
The Mavericks’ only loss at the Mayo Clinic Health System Event Center was a 3-1 defeat at the hands of St. Cloud State way back on Oct. 9. Since then they have won 18 consecutive times at home, including sweeping the Beavers by identical 5-1 scores in their regular-season finale Feb. 18-19.
MSU also swept the December series in Bemidji, although historically the teams have been more evenly matched. Last season the Mavericks edged the season series 3-2-1. But the teams have never met in the playoffs at the Division I level. But the teams, who have been playing against one another since the Division II, III and NAIA era, met multiple times in the NCHA tournament and once in the Division III playoffs.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said. “Two well coached teams, both highly-disciplined and it should be a real nice showcase for the CCHA, in front of a sold-out arena.”
