I started watching college hockey last season. Uverse and the NHL channel had a falling out and we lost the NHL channel (still gone) so I started channel surfing. Lo and behold, I landed on a hockey game between Harvard and Yale. I was so enamored with it that I wrote a post to share on this blog. You can check it out here if you want. I went on to watch games when the Kings were not playing and they were televised. Not many, but enough to fall a little in love.
With the lockout and ESPN sucking at televising the KHL games, I thought I’d do a little research and try to understand a bit more about college hockey. First off, it is enormous!!! Just the Division I teams are so numerous I’d never know all they players and that doesn’t even include Division II or Division III. So let’s start out smaller with just Division I. I encourage you to go look around and find the teams that are near you and familiarize yourself with them and support your local teams. But for purposes of starting out watching college hockey, I’m sticking to Division I.
There are around 138 colleges and universities with a hockey team. Division I is the top tier with 59 teams and is divided into 5 conferences. Here is a list for you:
- Atlantic Hockey
- Air Force
- American International
- Army
- Bentley
- Canisius
- Connecticut
- Holy Cross
- Mercyhurst
- Niagara
- RIT
- Robert Morris
- Sacred Heart
- CCHA
- Alaska
- Bowling Green
- Ferris State
- Lake Superior
- Miami
- Michigan
- Michigan State
- Northern Michigan
- Notre Dame
- Ohio State
- Western Michigan
- ECAC Hockey
- Brown
- Clarkson
- Colgate
- Cornell
- Dartmouth
- Harvard
- Princeton
- Quinnipiac
- Rensselaer
- St. Lawrence
- Union
- Yale
- Hockey East
- Boston
- Boston University
- Maine
- Massachusetts
- Umass Lowell
- Merrimack
- New Hampshire
- Northeastern
- Providence
- Vermont
- WCHA
- Alaska
- Bemidji
- Colorado
- Denver
- Michigan Tech
- Minnesota
- Minnesota Duluth
- Minnesota State
- Nebraska
- North Dakota
- St. Cloud
- Wisconsin
***2 more teams of Penn State and Alabama-Huntsville are Independent and although qualify for NCAA, they are not in the above conferences.
For the LA Kings, we have drafted the following players:
Name…………………………………..College………………………..Draft Year……..Round..Overall………
| Dowd, Nic | St. Cloud State | 2009 | 7 | 198 |
| Forbort, Derek | North Dakota | 2010 | 1 | 15 |
| Gravel, Kevin | St. Cloud State | 2010 | 5 | 148 |
| Lowry, Joel | Cornell | 2011 | 5 | 140 |
| Mersch, Michael | Wisconsin | 2011 | 4 | 110 |
| Shore, Nick | Denver | 2011 | 3 | 82 |
College Hockey News has the complete list of all drafted players here.
The season started Oct 6, 2012 and here is a list of the 2012-2013 schedule over at College Hockey News. But for me, I want to know when I can watch the games on TV. Again, CHN seems to have the best lists for what I want to know, so here is the list for all the televised games. As an example, here is October’s schedule:
| Game | Date | Time | Station | DTV | DishN |
| October | |||||
| Windsor vs. Michigan | Oct. 9 | 7:35 | ComLocal | ||
| Notre Dame vs. Maine | Oct. 12 | 6:00 | nbcsn | 603 | 151 |
| Connecticut vs. Massachusetts | Oct. 12 | 7:00 | CBS3 | ||
| St. Cloud State vs. New Hampshire | Oct. 12 | 7:00 | WBIN | 50 | |
| FCSp | 617 | ||||
| Army vs. Nebraska-Omaha | Oct. 12 | 9:00 | nbcsn | 603 | 151 |
| Niagara vs. Michigan State | Oct. 19 | 7:00 | ComLocal | ||
| Boston University vs. New Hampshire | Oct. 20 | 7:00 | WBIN | 50 | |
| Northeastern vs. New Hampshire | Oct. 26 | 7:00 | WBIN | 50 | |
| Maine vs. Providence | Oct. 26 | 7:00 | CoxNE | ||
| Miami vs. Michigan | Oct. 26 | 7:35 | ComLocal | ||
| Boston University vs. Massachusetts | Oct. 27 | 7:00 | CBS3 | ||
| New Hampshire vs. Northeastern | Oct. 27 | 7:00 | WBIN | 50 | |
| Maine vs. Providence | Oct. 27 | 7:00 | CoxNE | ||
What’s cool is you can change the schedule by date, channel and team. Most of the teams are local and not available to the larger market. I see that NBC Sports is on the list and that is my channel so I changed it up to show me only the games I can see:
| NBC Sports Network (, ) … DirecTV: 603 … Dish: 151 | ||
| Notre Dame vs. Maine | Oct. 12 | 6:00 |
| Army vs. Nebraska-Omaha | Oct. 12 | 9:00 |
| Harvard vs. Cornell | Nov. 16 | 7:00 |
| Boston College vs. Boston University | Nov. 30 | 7:30 |
| Wisconsin vs. Denver | Nov. 30 | 7:37 |
| Boston University vs. Boston College | Dec. 1 | 7:30 |
| Michigan State vs. Notre Dame | Dec. 7 | 7:05 |
| Colorado College vs. Nebraska-Omaha | Jan. 4 | 7:37 |
| Union vs. Princeton | Jan. 11 | 7:00 |
| Nebraska-Omaha vs. Denver | Jan. 11 | 7:37 |
| Harvard vs. Yale | Jan. 18 | 7:00 |
| Yale vs. Cornell | Jan. 25 | 7:00 |
| Dartmouth vs. Union | Feb. 1 | 7:00 |
| North Dakota vs. Nebraska-Omaha | Feb. 8 | 7:37 |
| Boston University vs. Maine | Feb. 15 | 7:30 |
| Yale vs. Quinnipiac | Feb. 22 | 7:00 |
| North Dakota vs. Denver | Feb. 22 | 7:37 |
| Wisconsin vs. Nebraska-Omaha | Mar. 1 | 7:37 |
| Maine vs. New Hampshire | Mar. 8 | 7:30 |
Looks like I’ll be watching two games on Friday night! Woo hoo! Double check the times as they say they are local. A quick check on your channel selector will help so you don’t miss any games. Remember to DVR the ones you can’t see live for later viewing.
I hope the above will help you out on your journey to becoming a College Hockey Fan. I’m ready. Let’s learn together.
tracykingslover
October 10, 2012
Make sure to double check times! I just looked at Friday on uverse and it seems the times are 4pm and 7pm pst.
The Recipe Seeker
October 16, 2012
I was so depressed about not watching the Kings, that I did not check our blog until this morning when Mary reminded me about college hockey. This is so wonderful of you to do this Tracy. I will definitely check in on some of the games on channel 603. The KHL games put me to sleep so this is a go to for us poor suffering fans.