Denver-Providence. 3:30 pm MT on Friday, March 28th. Manchester, NH. ESPN+. Denver’s opening game on their path to their second-straight and 11th overall national title is set.

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee offered no surprises as the bracket had been effectively set for the last couple of weeks. Given the relative stability of the Pairwise Rankings this season and the distribution of each conference’s teams throughout the top 16, the committee’s job was made extremely easy – they were able to maintain strong bracket integrity without making significant regional adjustments and it was perhaps best exemplified by the Manchester regional where #1 overall seed plays the lowest seed Bentley and #8 Providence plays #9 Denver.

By rule, the top overall seed – Boston College this year – is placed in the regional closest to its campus. Then they are assigned the lowest ranked qualifying team – Atlantic Hockey champion Bentley this season – and assuming that doesn’t present an intra-conference matchup, any necessary adjustments (i.e., placing hosts in their hosted regional, removing first-round intra-conference matchups, etc.) from the seeded matchups are made. This year, the only departures from the traditional bracket integrity concept were #3 Maine playing #13 Penn State, #4 Western Michigan playing #14 Minnesota State, #6 UConn playing #12 Quinnipiac, and #5 Minnesota playing #11 UMass-Amherst. And even then, those adjustments were minor at best.

Here is the full bracket:

The bracket is HERE! 🤩#NCAAHockey pic.twitter.com/TDzqNGZNJ4

— NCAA Ice Hockey (@NCAAIceHockey) March 23, 2025

Denver-Providence next Friday will be televised on ESPN+. The winner of that game will play the winner of the Boston College-Bentley matchup on Sunday. All three Manchester Regional games take place at SNHU Arena.