Minnesota is the top overall seed in the Men’s Division I NCAA hockey championship and will play in the Fargo Regional on Thursday evening after the 2023 tournament field was unveiled by the committee on Sunday evening.
The Golden Gophers will take on Canisius, the Atlantic Hockey champion, with the winner facing either NCHC champion St. Cloud State or CCHA winner Minnesota State in a regional that has a heavy Minnesota feel.
According to Vermont athletic director Jeff Schulman, chair of the Division I men’s ice hockey committee, the decision to keep St. Cloud close to home as opposed to either sending Minnesota to the Allentown region with 8-seed Penn State to maintain bracket integrity or move Harvard to Fargo to allow the top-seeded Gophers to potentially matchup with the seventh overall seed in the second round made more sense.
“We felt like Minnesota is the clear number one seed,” said Schulman. “Thus, we wanted them to play as close to home as possible. Also, putting them in Allentown, assuming Penn State and Minnesota both advanced, essentially it would be a road game for Minnesota. That didn’t feel right to the committee.
“We then were looking really close at St. Cloud and Harvard, and even though St. Cloud was sixth in the PairWise and Harvard was seventh, the difference between those two was really small.”
The tournament will kick off a 2:00 p.m. ET on Thursday as two potent offenses, Western Michigan and Hockey East tournament champion Boston University square off in the Manchester regional. The winner will take of the victor of the region’s top seed Denver and Cornell, one of four ECAC teams to qualify for the field.
On Friday, regional play continues in the Bridgeport Regional where Harvard takes on Ohio State beginning at 2:00 p.m. ET. The nightcap features top seed Quinnipiac, playing less than 30 miles from its campus, taking on Merrimack, the final at-large team in to qualify for the field.
Setting up the Quinnipiac-Merrimack matchup, according to Schulman, was an easy decision. While the second seed should play the 15th overall seed, Quinnipiac was forced away from that team – Colgate – to avoid a conference opponent in the first round. Cornell also fell into that category, thus Merrimack or Canisius were the only options. And the showing of Merrimack’s fanbase at TD Garden last weekend emphasized the need to keep the Warriors in New England.
“Things sort of played out pretty easily,” Schulman said. “The Minnesota-Canisius matchup was pretty obvious to us (top overall seed against lowest seed). So the rest of it played out [with ease].”
The Allentown Regional will be the final that gets underway with region host Penn State taking on Michigan Tech beginning at 5:00 p.m. ET, followed by the region’s top seed and Big Ten champion Michigan facing ECAC champion Colgate, making their first appearance in the field since 2014.
The winners of the Fargo and Manchester Regionals will play in one national semifinal while the Allentown and Bridgeport champions will face off in the other national semifinal at the Frozen Four in Tampa, Fla., on April 6 and 8.
View the 2023 Men’s D-I hockey bracket »»»
