NCAA hockey champion Minnesota-Duluth and five other top teams in college hockey will form a new National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC) at the start of the 2013-14 season. This is according to the Detroit News who cites the schools announcements on the matter.

Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) members in Minnesota Duluth, Colorado College, Denver, Nebraska-Omaha and North Dakota will join up with Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) member Miami of Ohio to form this conference starting in the 2012-13 season.
According to the Detroit News as well as other published reports the new conference hopes to attract Notre Dame but an agreement with the South Bend school hasn’t yet been agreed upon.
“Notre Dame is in conversations with us,” North Dakota athletic director Brian Faison said. “They’re certainly a program that meets our core values of our conference and we have an interest in them, but we’ll continue to explore other options.
The News also reports that current CCHA member Western Michigan University may also be a candidate to join the new NCHC conference at one point.
On Wednesday the conference outlined it’s plans and priorities which include adding a commissioner and more schools.
“I don’t think there’s a magic number. It still needs to be discussed,” Minnesota Duluth coach Scott Sandelin said of how many teams would eventually make up the conference.

“We all feel there are going to be other expressions of interest,” Colorado College athletic director Ken Ralph said. “I don’t think you’ll see us stay at six. We’ll grow to seven, maybe eight.”

The landscape of college hockey began to change during this off-season after the Big Ten announced they would form their own hockey conference consisting of Michigan, Michigan State and Ohio State who currently are members of the CCHA. The Big Ten Conference will also add Wisconsin and Minnesota of the WCHA as well as upstart Penn State.

Source: Detroit News

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