ECAC Hockey was a very different league in the mid-2000s.
It was, for starters, an actual part of the ECAC, the sports federation that was founded in the early 1930s. It was initially like its parent organization, but college hockey’s realignment in the 1980s saw a division of teams break away to form Hockey East. The remaining 12 teams formally joined together to form the entire ECAC, and 20 years later, they, too, were separating from the New England-based organization.
Steve Hagwell was, at the time, the associate commissioner for men’s hockey, and after serving in the capacity for four years, he was named as the interim commissioner for the new league that retained the ECAC name. One year later, he was given the permanent role, and for the next two decades, he served as the steward for one of college hockey’s oldest continuous leagues.
This summer, after 17 years as commissioner of ECAC and 23 years as the man in charge of the men’s conference’s spiritual timeline, he will step aside and retire, effective at the conclusion of the 2022-2023 fiscal year.
“I haven’t given it a whole lot of stock, to be frank,” said the commissioner in an interview this week. “Because we’re in the midst of the season, my biggest thing coming down the stretch is to make sure that I don’t fall or tail off or let some of my duties fall by the wayside because I’m thinking about the future. From that standpoint, the stretch run is here. Once the season is over, I’ll definitely have nothing but time to think about what’s going to happen moving forward, but right now, I’m just trying to focus on doing what I need to do to help our league move forward.”
Three decades can introduce unprecedented change to any sport, but ECAC’s rise in the modern era of college hockey was almost as impossible to fathom as the changes that existed around it. When Hagwell became commissioner of ECAC Hockey, the national championship scene was dominated by a three-league arms race between the CCHA, the WCHA and Hockey East. St. Lawrence advanced to the Frozen Four in 2000 with Cornell qualifying in 2003, but they were the first ECAC teams to qualify for the national semifinal since Harvard’s 1994 loss to Lake Superior State.
There hadn’t been a league team playing for the national championship since Colgate’s loss to Wisconsin in 1990, and constant reminders echoed the Crimson’s 1989 championship as the league’s last title.
ECAC simply lost ground to the other three leagues, and Vermont’s departure after the 2004-2005 season left a hole in the conference’s New England-based footprint.
“When the league broke [from ECAC], there were signs that things weren’t going very well,” Hagwell said. “There was a separation on the men’s side with the CCHA, the WCHA, and with Hockey East, and the gap seemed to be growing, and there was a consensus among the coaches and administrators that something needed to be done. [The other leagues] were single-sport conferences with a person and staff dedicated to hockey, and that’s what this league wanted. I was in that role dealing with the day-to-day, getting to know the coaches and the administrators, and I had an opportunity to take the interim role.”
The move was immeasurable to the league’s success. ECAC replaced the Catamounts with Quinnipiac, which eventually became one of the nation’s preeminent powerhouses, and within a decade, the Frozen Four drought ended in dramatic style when Union won the East Regional. Two years later, Yale played Quinnipiac in the 2013 national championship, and after Union won its championship in 2014, the Bobcats returned to the national championship game in 2016 with Harvard advancing to the Frozen Four in 2017.
It was an apex of sorts for the league, and it occurred at a time when college hockey swirled through turbulent waters. It was the only league untouched by the realignment and expansion of the mid-2010s despite being the only conference largely represented by two distinct entities. College Hockey America didn’t survive, and the CCHA essentially merged into the WCHA after the Big Ten and NCHC gutted their mighty programs. Hockey East gained and lost Notre Dame, and Atlantic Hockey scooped two teams from the CHA’s collapse.
ECAC had six teams from the Ivy League and six teams that weren’t closely affiliated in any Division I league other than hockey, but it survived without incident because the 12 entities closed ranks. As that happened, they emerged victorious on the national stage, to which a higher profile as a power league finally formed around a conference once left behind.
“Over the years, a lot of people asked what would happen if the Ivy League schools broke off,” Hagwell said, “and I’ve never heard that. Within this league, everyone wants the same thing. They certainly want to win as individual programs, but they want this league to be successful. That’s been true from day one for me, and that’s been my experience. I don’t see the division that others thought existed. For me, these 12 schools are always trying to go in the same direction.”
That included an unprecedented equity that involved a women’s game that didn’t have NCAA Tournament sponsorship prior to 2001. It gained full membership from each of its 12 members right around the time that the league split away from the ECAC home office, and even as of this year, it’s the only conference that can claim equal membership on both the men’s and women’s sides.
In 2014, Clarkson became the first non-WCHA team to win the national championship, splitting Minnesota’s four championships into two, two-year reigns, before winning consecutive titles again in 2017 and 2018.
“It took a little bit of time,” Hagwell said. “Getting to 12 teams in the ‘mirror league’ was especially gratifying because our institutions and the administrators representing those institutions have been committed to 12 teams on both sides. It was never just men’s hockey or women’s hockey [for us]. That’s been tremendous, and the growth of the women’s game over that time has been mind boggling.”
That doesn’t mean everything in ECAC has ever been perfect, but the league’s infrastructure kept it pushing forward through decades of changes. This year marks the first time the postseason will include all 12 teams on the women’s side, and the men’s championship weekend returned to Lake Placid, New York in 2014 after it spent 12 years moving first to Albany and later to Atlantic City, New Jersey.
It was the first league to have teams shut down for COVID-19, and the 2020-2021 season featured four of its 12 teams after the six Ivy League schools opted out of athletics with RPI and Union.
It was also the first league to sign a broadcast agreement for the ESPN+ digital subscription service after its Ivy League affiliates joined the network as part of the Ivy League Digital Network’s move to the Ivy League on ESPN.
All of this is a legacy built by the independent ECAC’s only commissioner. The search for the next chapter is ongoing, but no matter what happens, when the next champion is awarded the Whitelaw Cup at Herb Brooks Arena, the trip to the national tournament will unquestionably produce a lasting memory for the steward who helped build a conference with a little help from his friends.
“It was tremendously gratifying during that 2013-2014 to see Yale and Quinnipiac in the men’s final,” Hagwell said. “Clarkson winning the women’s championship in 2014, and then two weeks later, Union winning it in Philadelphia was just surreal. I’ll never forget the fact that we were co-hosting [the Frozen Four] in 2014, and that made it a little more hectic. We hit the stretch where Union got into the Frozen Four in Tampa and broke the drought. Prior to that, it had been Cornell, and then a few years later, Colgate and Clarkson played for the women’s national championship [in 2018].
“It’s a different landscape. I’m not on social media for the good, bad, or indifferent. With [name, image, likeness], the transfer portal, it’s just a different landscape. I had some personal things that happened that caused me to consider [retirement], but it all ties together. I don’t ever want to be in a scenario where I hurt this league, and so a lot of different factors went into everything. This isn’t the NCAA that I grew up in, but I had the pleasure of working there for a number of years, and it’s just time for me.”
