A Tale of Two Championships
Image Credit: Hockey East
An in-person report from the aha and hockey east tournament finals, and the environment of campus and neutral sites.
WRITTEN BY MIKE KLEIN
As the start of spring and the NCAA Division I men’s ice hockey championship approached, two teams would leave Massachusetts with automatic bids to the tournament as their conference champions. Both the Hockey East and Atlantic Hockey America tournaments would be played approximately ten miles away from each other, but both in vastly different environments.
The Hockey East tournament once again returned to the TD Garden, where it has been held every year since the building’s opening, except for the cancelled 2020 edition and the locked-down 2021 event.
Year after year, fans from nearly every school in the conference come to enjoy the event. The championship game is played the day after the semifinals. Most fans stay for both games on the first day and return the following day, even if their team was eliminated.
The conference counts blueblood programs such as Boston University, Boston College, Maine, and Providence College among its members, along with recent NCAA champions UMass. Disrupters such as UConn and UMass- Lowell have also made their presence known during the tournament.
This season saw a tremendous upheaval in the standings, as regular-season champion Providence found itself eliminated by Merrimack and defending champion Maine had their season ended by BC the previous weekend. More notably, all four remaining teams, UMass, UConn, BC, and Merrimack, faced do-or-die scenarios entering the weekend.
Surprisingly, the non-conference record among the eleven member schools underwhelmed and only Providence found themselves having secured an at-large bid to the NCAA tournament. UMass and UConn each needed to win one game and hope for some favorable outcomes in the other conferences to sneak into the field of 16, while BC and Merrimack could only move on by securing the conference’s automatic bid.
Given the TD Garden’s central location, fans from nearly every Hockey East school show up for the championship and wear their colors proudly. Although BU, Lowell, Maine, and Northeastern were finished, one could see fans wearing their jerseys in the arena.
Before the games and during intermissions, the concourse resembles a cross between a convention and a family reunion. NHL scouts gather to take note of drafted players and potential free agents and fans chat amicably with each other even if they support opposing teams. Once the play resumes, however, the concourse becomes a ghost town and few empty seats are to be found. The only exceptions were in 2014 and 2017, when Notre Dame was a member of the conference and advanced to the semifinals.
The gameday production during the event reflects Hockey East’s decision to hold it at a neutral site. Both teams’ introduction videos are played before the lineups are announced and the crew uses the effects for the Bruins after each team scores.
Image Credit: Hockey East | A packed TD Garden for a past Hockey East tournament game featuring Boston College and Boston University
By the start of the second period of the early game (Merrimack vs. UMass), the arena was mostly full. Both schools’ pep bands made the trip, as did a large number of fans. The only noticeably empty sections in the balcony later belonged to the UConn and BC pep bands.
The large UMass contingent was expected: the school is the flagship for the state university system and despite its remote location, much of the population lives near Boston and could easily make the trip. What stood out was that Merrimack, a school of 5,600 students, would enjoy such a deafening applause after Ryan O’Connell’s goal three minutes into the first period. Given that Merrimack goalie Max Lundgren pitched a shutout, there was no way for the UMass fans to factor into any late comeback.
In the late game, the crowd had thinned out a bit despite the presence of a school whose fans, like UMass, live in the Boston area and can often reach the arena with a one-seat ride on public transportation. That said, the balcony had what seemed like a quarter of its seats filled with BC students. UConn, on the other hand, had far less support, probably owing to the beginning of the NCAA basketball tournament. However, with BC perpetually having a target on its back, many in the building became temporary Huskies fans.
The intensity of those supporting UConn did not seem to suffer due to the lack of numbers, as Trey Scott’s goal early in the second received a loud ovation. Although the late game never started at its scheduled time of 7:00 PM, practically nobody left the arena once regulation ended.
At the end of the day, wins by Merrimack and UConn guaranteed that a team would win Hockey East for the first time.
Just outside of Boston, another conference championship trophy would be awarded at the Bentley Arena, which hosted the game for the first time ever. Before 2023, Atlantic Hockey (the predecessor to the current Atlantic Hockey America) hosted its championship at a predetermined site hosted by one of the member schools.
While Bentley Arena holds only 1,917 fans for hockey, fans can easily walk up and purchase a ticket at the door for regular-season and early-round playoff games. For the championship game, however, the tickets sold out in short order. Students were given priority to register for a free ticket and showed up in droves. A few sections of Sacred Heart fans made the trip and both schools brought pep bands.
Image Credit: Boston Globe | Bentley celebrates its second-straight AHA tournament championship on home ice with a rowdy student section behind the team.
The on-campus location, along with the small capacity, means that fans of other schools in the conference would be kept away due to the distance and would likely not even try to buy a ticket. Additionally, NHL scouts were absent, although some had attended regular-season contests.
Saturday’s matchup was very much a home game for the Falcons. For the first time ever, the home team took the ice through a fog machine. The PA announcer continued his home-game routine, announcing the visitors in a tone appropriate for a funeral before getting hyped up for Bentley.
Although many of the students may have attended their first hockey game that night, they did not lack for passion. Having listened to the announcement, the fans blacked out several sections of the arena, save a group of shirtless students who each painted their chests to say “BENTLEY” and occupied the front row. Naturally, Sacred Heart fans, sporting their bright red, stood out considerably. Both groups of fans cheered loudly throughout the game and mayhem ensued after each of the teams’ goals. Immediately after each of Bentley’s goals, the fog machines went off behind the Sacred Heart goaltender.
While there are no plans to change either championship location, debates continue across the country about campus or neutral sites. For now, these two games demonstrated the best of either option.
