As we prepare to start another college hockey season in just a few weeks, we are also entering a new, unprecedented era as former Canadian Hockey League (CHL) Major Junior players are eligible to play in the NCAA for the first time since the early 1980s. This new era also gets underway after we awarded our third first-time Division I national champion – Western Michigan – since 2021. The other two champions in that span were Denver in 2022 and 2024, when they won their 9th and record 10th championships, respectively, which presents an interesting dichotomy, a sort of success split between the historical blue bloods and new powers in the sport.

This dichotomy got me thinking earlier this Summer; we’ve seen some incredible moments and growth in the sport over the past two and a half decades – 25 national championships have been awarded since 2000 – but which programs rose to the top during that span? And how does that compare to other decades and even all-time results?

We know that Denver sits alone on the national title mountaintop with 10, while Michigan and North Dakota follow with nine and eight titles, respectively. However, not all eras are created equally (for example, only four to six teams earned NCAA Tournament berths between 1948 and 1980), and, contrary to some DU fans’ opinions, national title success is not the only measure of a program’s sustained success. It’s a big factor, the biggest even, but not the only one.

As soon as Western Michigan’s on-ice celebration ended in April, I set out to determine an objective, fair, and mathematical way to calculate what is the best college hockey program of the last 25 full seasons (only regular season results and individual awards from the  Covid-19-shortened 2019-20 season are counted), and rank every men’s program that competed from the 1999-2000 season through the 2024-25 season. And, as you might have guessed, it morphed into a decade-by-decade analysis and then into an all-time analysis. More on that below.

Before we dive into the results, we must define what makes a successful college hockey program because, as I mentioned above, national success is not the sole factor in determining success on a year-to-year basis. Basing everything on the NCAA Tournament leaves out regular-season championships, conference tournament championships (which were not really a thing until the WCHA started them in 1960 and the ECAC followed suit in 1962), and even individual award winners like winning the Hobey Baker Award (beginning in 1981) and the Mike Richter Award (beginning in 2014).

I can already hear the college hockey purists screaming in my ear: “Buhhhh national championships and NCAA Tournaments are all that matter! BANNERZ!” So let’s get into the annual results rating/weighting criteria (in ascending order of points), which hopefully assuages the ‘Bannerz’ crowd:

Mike Richter Award – 1 point
Hobey Baker Award – 2 pts
NCAA Tournament Appearance – 2 pts
Regional Final (‘Final 8’) Appearance – 3 pts
Conference Tournament Championship – 3 pts
Regular Season Championship – 4 pts
Frozen Four Appearance – 5 pts
National Title Game Appearance – 7 pts
National Title – 10 pts

To illustrate how this works, let’s use our most recent champion – Western Michigan – as an example. The Broncos had a historic season, winning the NCHC regular-season title, the NCHC Tournament, and the national championship. As such, they earned 34 points for their regular season title (4 pts), conference tournament title (3), NCAA Tournament appearance (2), Regional Final appearance (3), Frozen Four appearance (5), national title game appearance (7), and national title (10).

What you should glean from this is that while success in the regular season and conference tournament factors into a team’s overall success (7 of WMU’s 34 points, or 20.5% came from NCHC play), the formula is significantly weighted in favor of NCAA Tournament success.

For any remaining skeptics, I made a point to run this formula by multiple people at high levels within the college hockey ecosystem, and they signed off on my sanity and, more importantly, how this whole thing works (I actually made a few edits to it throughout the process based on their feedback).

A few notes about some unique season results and how they were handled by the model:

First, there were several instances where teams ended the regular season tied at the top of their respective conference standings. In these situations, every team tied at the top is considered a regular-season champion and earns the four points associated with that title. For example, Boston College, Boston University, and UMass-Lowell finished the 2016-17 season tied atop the Hockey East standings with 29 points. All three programs earned four points in this model for the regular-season championship that year. Similarly, between 1966 and 1981, the WCHA named two teams as Tournament champions (except for 1977). In those situations, both named champions earned three points for earning conference tournament championships.

Next, the model ignores how the NCAA handles “vacated” titles or NCAA Tournament appearances. If the game was played, the model counts it. As an example, the NCAA vacated Denver’s 1973 national title appearance for recruiting “violations” (which are now laughable…more on that below), but this model ignores the NCAA’s determinations to that end. The game was played – Wisconsin beat Denver, 4-2 – so Denver earned all points associated with that NCAA Tournament appearance and national championship loss.

Finally, there are situations in the following images where teams that competed do not show up in the data. The only programs that are shown are those that actually earned points during the applicable time period. Rensselaer, for example, does not show up in the 1970s, 2000s, or 2020s images below, but it does in the 1960s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2010s. The reason is that the Engineers earned zero points in the decades they are not shown. As a result, they did not qualify to be ranked in the ’70s, 2000s, or 2020s.

Alright, enough jabbering about the model and math; onto the results and analysis:

Top Programs Since 2000
(Click on any image to open the three-image gallery)

It might have been because of my Crimson & Gold-tinted glasses, but Boston College setting itself apart from the rest of the pack to such a degree as the top program of the last 25 seasons surprised me. But then I dug into the numbers – 13 regular-season titles, 15 Regional Final appearances, 11 Frozen Fours, eight(!) national title game appearances, four national titles – and I realized my shock was sorely misplaced. Jerry York is a top-three coach of all time (he’s not number three) for a reason.

After BC, though, everything mostly aligned with what I expected. Denver and North Dakota are neck and neck, with the Pios just five points ahead of their archrivals from Grand Forks. The Fighting Sioux/Hawks owned the first 11 years of this era, with seven of their 11 Frozen Four appearances coming between 2000 and 2011. Denver, in turn, edged past the Fighting Hawks in the last 10 years, with six of their eight Frozen Four appearances and three of their five national titles coming since 2016.

The difference between the programs? Denver – which has the most national titles of any program over the last 25 seasons – won all five of its national title appearances, while North Dakota batted just .500 in their natty appearances, winning in 2000 and 2016, but losing to BC in 2001 and Denver in 2005.

Minnesota, Michigan, Boston University, Minnesota Duluth, Quinnipiac, Notre Dame, and Cornell round out the rest of the top 10, all of which finished well behind the likes of BC, DU, and North Dakota, which set themselves apart from the field.

Traditional powers Minnesota and Michigan – the top two programs of all time as calculated by this formula (more on that below) – have, by their own lofty standards, fallen off over the past 10-15 years, at least on the national stage. The Gophers have two Frozen Four appearances – 2022 & 2023 – since falling to Union in the 2014 national title game, while Michigan, once the gold standard in the sport, has just one national title appearance (2011 loss to Minnesota Duluth) to show for its nine Frozen Four berths since 2000. To add insult, the Wolverines have zero national titles since winning two in three years in 1996 and 1998, which are their only two titles since 1964.

Minnesota Duluth, the Team of the 2010s (again, more on that below), checks in at #7 thanks in large part to their comparative dominance from 2010 through 2019. 121 of the Bulldogs’ 161 points were earned during that decade when they won national titles in 2011, 2018, and 2019 while also appearing in the 2017 national title game (won, of course, by Denver). Over the past 25 years, the Bulldogs made it to the NCAA Tournament 11 times, advancing to the Regional Finals every time, an impressive feat in its own right.

Quinnipiac, the 8th-ranked team of the last quarter-century, presents an interesting case and one that tested the sanity of this model. With an impressive 11 regular-season championships – second only to Boston College in that category – to just two conference tournament championships and only six Regional Final appearances and three Frozen Four appearances, it begs the question: do the Bobcats deserve to be a Top 10 team? Or is this model flawed, and should we burn the whole thing to the ground? QU’s (and the model’s) saving grace is the fact that they advanced to the national title game in each of their Frozen Four appearances, highlighted, of course, by their thrilling 2023 comeback overtime victory over Minnesota to clinch their first-ever title.

All-Time Top Programs
(Click into any image to open the three-image gallery)

If there were many surprises in the results for the last 25 years, there are none in the all-time results. Michigan hasn’t seen much national success – at least in the final weekend of the season – in recent decades, but no program has been able to close the gap that the Wolverines built in the 1940s & 50s, which begs yet another question: are all championships created equal? For a model like this, they sort of have to be, but I eagerly await the impassioned arguments to this end in the comments, because this was an issue I grappled with throughout this process.

At the same time, it’s hard to argue with the Maize and Blue’s numbers. 41 national tournament appearances (#2 all time) – 36 Regional Final appearances (#1), 28 Frozen Fours (#1), 12 national title game appearances (t-#2), and nine national titles (#2). Digging even further into their national championship numbers, at no point in the history of Division I men’s college hockey, at least until Denver won its 10th title in 2024, has Michigan ever not had the most championships.

So, is Michigan deserving of the “Greatest College Hockey Program of All Time” moniker? Absolutely. But at the rate the gap between them and the field is shrinking, they won’t have it for long. Just 20 points behind are the Golden Gophers of Minnesota with their 42 NCAA Tournament appearances, 20 regular-season conference championships, 13 national title game appearances, and five national championships.

Hell, even the next four teams – Boston College, Boston University, North Dakota, and Denver – are all within 50 points of Michigan, meaning they’re within just two years of dethroning the Wolverines.

What really stuck out of the all-time results, though, was not only how close the top six are, but the wide points margin between #6 and #7 – nearly 200 points. With a Grand Canyon-esque gap between Denver and Wisconsin, there are really only six programs – Michigan, Minnesota, Boston College, Boston University, North Dakota, and Denver – that can lay claim to the “blue blood” descriptor.

Historical powers like Michigan Tech and Colorado College are lurking just outside of the top 10 after falling on comparatively hard times in recent decades. The Huskies, who hail from Houghton, had some strong teams in the 1960s and ’70s, winning three national titles and appearing in six national championship games during those two decades. The CC Tigers, similarly, had strong teams in the 1950s, winning both of their national titles in 1950 and 1957 and appearing in seven of the first 10 NCAA Tournaments (then a four-team competition).

Top Programs by Decade

1940s & 50s

Team of the ’40s & ’50s: Michigan

To no one’s surprise, Michigan, with six of its nine all-time national titles coming in the first 12 years of Division I Men’s College Hockey competition (1948 – 1959), is the top program of the 1940s & 50s (it didn’t make sense to present 1948 & 1949 as a single decade). The Wolverines missed the NCAA Tournament – then a four-team competition (yes, “just making” the NCAA Tournament during this era counts as a Tournament Appearance, Final 8 Appearance, and Frozen Four Appearance) – only twice in 1958 & 1959 during these 12 seasons, when Denver and North Dakota each won their first titles.

1960s

Team of the ’60s: Denver

Much the same way that Michigan owned the 1940s and ’50s, Denver, led by legendary head coach Murray Armstrong, was inarguably the Team of the ’60s. The Pioneers appeared in more national title games (six) than they didn’t (four), and their two national title losses came to North Dakota (1963) and Michigan (1964). Fueled by Armstrong’s strong Canadian ties and incomparable Major Junior to DU pipeline, there was Denver in the 1960s, and then everyone else. Michigan Tech had a couple of years of greatness in 1962 and 1965 – two of the three seasons when DU failed to make the NCAA Tournament – but no program could come close to matching DU’s Pioneering dominance of the ’60s.

In fact, it was due in part to DU’s unmatched success during this decade (and the late 1950s) that the University of Minnesota lobbied the NCAA to make  Canadian Major Junior players ineligible in the mid-1970s. You can read more about that ruling and how it affected DU in the late 1970s through 1990s in Part II of our very own Puck Swami’s 70 Years of DU Hockey History series that we published in 2019.

1970s

Team of the ’70s: Boston University

For the first time since the sport’s inception in 1948, the 1970s were not dominated by just one program. Instead, Boston University, Minnesota, and Wisconsin (to a lesser degree) battled it out for national supremacy. BU went three-for-three in its national title appearances (1971, 1972, & 1978) while Minnesota won three of its five title appearances in 1974, 1976, and 1979.

The highlight of the decade, though, was no doubt the 1976 national semifinal – held in Denver – between the Terriers and Gophers that featured the infamous brawl that was referenced and dramatized by Miracle (2004) when BU’s Jack O’Callahan complains to Team USA teammate Ralph Cox (University of New Hampshire) about Minnesota’s Rob McClanahan, “I wanted to win a national championship. That pansy over there cheap shots me. I get tossed out of the game. He steals the ring right off my finger! How would you feel?”

Minnesota would go on to win the fight-filled semifinal before topping Michigan Tech in the title game to capture the Gophers’ second title of the decade. O’Callahan, for his part, fulfilled his burning desire to win a national championship just two years later in 1978 as BU’s captain, topping Commonwealth Ave archrival Boston College, 5-3.

A note for Denver fans: In 1978, just as the WCHA Tournament was starting, then top-ranked DU was still serving a NCAA tournament ban as a result of the controversial 1974 major junior “recruiting infractions” NCAA penalty given to Denver when DU refused to go along with the NCAA’s subsequent grandfathering plan to eventually eliminate major junior players from NCAA play.  That 1974 NCAA decision also ‘vacated’ DU’s 1973 NCAA title game appearance. With over 30 wins (33 in total) in 1978, DU had appealed to the NCAA to end the ban in time to play in the 1978 NCAA Tournament, but the appeal was turned down. Almost certainly due to the distraction of the disappointing NCAA appeal failure, then #1 Denver, with no NCAA bid to play for, fell to rival Colorado College in the WCHA Tournament. Many Pioneer fans believe DU had a very legitimate chance for an NCAA crown that season had the Pioneers been allowed to actually play for it. With the coming rule change that reinstates Major Junior players’ NCAA eligibility ahead of the 2025-26 season, we believe it is now high time that the NCAA also reinstates DU’s 1973 ‘vacated’ national title appearance back to the official NCAA record books, even if the NCAA can’t change the Pioneers’ misfortune of 1978. 

1980s

Team of the ’80s: Michigan State

The 1980s witnessed the rise of Michigan State and Harvard as national powers in the sport, rivaling the established brands of North Dakota and Minnesota. North Dakota, for their part, led the way with three national titles (1980, 1982, and 1987), but Michigan State’s and Harvard’s better comparative consistency in making the national tournament, which expanded to eight teams in 1981 and then to 12 in 1988, brought them even with the then-Fighting Sioux.

The ’80s also saw the first meaningful expansion of not only the NCAA Tournament but also the number of Division I programs competing. There were only 16 teams to record points in the 1940s & 50s, and 1960s. That number rose slightly to 19 in the 1970s, but there was a relative expansion bonanza in the ’80s as that number increased to 28. The NCAA responded swiftly, of course, by expanding the national tournament twice during the decade.

1990s (Click into either image to open the two-image gallery)

Team of the ’90s: Boston University

The 1990s were perhaps the most interesting decade in college hockey history. Expansion continued as 34 programs recorded points, but it was the first decade in which no single program won more than two titles. Seven different programs – Boston University, Michigan, Maine, Lake Superior State, Wisconsin, North Dakota, and Northern Michigan – won at least one title from 1990 to 1999.

You could also argue that even though the top 10 of the ’90s has its share of the sport’s blue bloods, this was the decade of the non-traditional powers. Maine won both of its titles in 1993 and 1999, the first of which featured a stacked Black Bears roster that included the likes of Paul Kariya and Jim Montgomery (who recorded a hat trick in the national title game) on Maine’s top line. Lake Superior State won two titles in three years, beating Wisconsin in 1992 and Boston University in 1994, while Northern Michigan defeated Boston University in 1991.

2000s (Click into either image to open the two-image gallery)

Team of the 2000s: Boston College

Jerry York was lured away from Bowling Green by Boston College in 1994, and the rest is history. York’s Eagles went to four straight Frozen Fours from 1998 to 2001, falling to Michigan and North Dakota in the 1998 and 2000 national title games before winning the program’s first national title since 1949 in a rematch of the 2000 national championship, topping the then-Fighting Sioux, 3-2.

Over the course of the rest of the 2000s, BC appeared in four more Frozen Fours, winning it all again in 2008 after falling in the national title game to Wisconsin in 2006 and Michigan State in 2007. There have been more dominant decades by other programs (i.e., Denver in the ’60s), but considering the expansion of Division I and the NCAA Tournament in the decades leading up to and including the 2000s (the Tournament expanded to its current 16-team format in 2003), you could easily argue that no program had a more impressive decade than what BC accomplished between 2000 and 2009. It’s this dominance that played the largest part in making the Eagles the top team of the last 25 years.

2010s (Click into any image to open the three-image gallery)

Team of the 2010s: Minnesota Duluth

It’s amazing what Scott Sandelin has done with the Minnesota Duluth men’s hockey program in his nearly three decades at the helm of that program. Sharing a state with the Gophers has never been an easy road to navigate. Under Mike Sertich from 1982 to 2000, the Bulldogs had their moments, like their two Frozen Four appearances in the 1980s. But for the most part, UMD has been lost in the long shadow cast by the University of Minnesota. When Sandelin was hired by UMD in 2000, he started slowly building a program worthy of competing with the blue bloods.

The Bulldogs finally broke through in 2011, beating Michigan for the program’s first-ever championship. While the 2011 championship was a big one for Sandelin’s program, it was just a preview of what the Bulldogs would accomplish by the end of the decade: three-straight national title game appearances from 2017 to 2019 and back-to-back titles in 2018 & 2019, the first time a program achieved that feat since Denver did it in 2004 & 2005. UMD’s three-year stretch at the end of the decade is also the reason why Boston College didn’t stay at #1 in the 2010s, as the Eagles sandwiched the Bulldogs’ 2011 championship with titles in 2010 and 2012 and two more Frozen Four appearances in 2014 and 2016.

2020s (so far…) (Click into either image to open the two-image gallery)

Team of the 2020s (so far…): Denver

I mean…obviously. There have been five championships awarded since 2020, and Denver has won two of them (2022 & 2024). The Pioneers added a third Frozen Four appearance in 2025 when they fell to eventual champion Western Michigan in a heart-stopping overtime semifinal matchup. If David Carle’s program can keep this rate of success going for the next five years, 2020s Denver will challenge 2000s Boston College for the most dominant decade in the sport’s history.

So, there you have it. The entire history of Division I men’s college hockey has been quantified, ranked, and thoroughly analyzed. I look forward to lively debate in the comments about this methodology and ideas for how others might perform the same analysis. I certainly do not claim that this methodology is the one and only way to quantify sustained success in the sport, so if one or some of you come up with intriguing methodology alternatives or identify key blind spots in my analysis, I may post a follow-up piece with updated and alternative results.

With that, let’s drop the puck on 2025-26!

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Editor’s Note: it was pointed out on Twitter that Minnesota has won 11 regular-season championships since 2000, not 10. The model failed to account for the Gophers’ 2025 tie with Michigan State. While this does not change where the Gophers are ranked, Minnesota has 214 points (not 210) since 2000 and 55 (not 51) in the 2020s. I apologize for the omission.