NCAA Weekender: New arenas, player facilities key to keeping teams competitive

Recapping the biggest stories of the NCAA weekend.

There are many ways college hockey has changed in recent years, but one that hasn't gotten as much attention while still providing a seismic impact is the investments schools are making into not just their programs, but the facilities those programs use.

It used to be that NCAA hockey was played in a variety of grand old barns built prior to the 1970s, that often looked like airplane hangars someone plopped a rink into. In some cases, like at RPI, that's literally what happened.

But since the turn of the century, and especially in the last 15 years or so, that's really started to change. While there have 22 rinks across Div. 1 college hockey — more than one-third of all home arenas — opened since the turn of the century, 17 have been built since 2010 alone, and seven of those since 2021. Another is in the process of being built, and two more have been tentatively announced (including one for Tennessee State, which hasn't officially started playing Div. 1 hockey). Many other rinks have undergone significant renovations in the past decade-plus, some public-facing, but most for team-focused improvements.

That rate of new builds over the last 25 years is similar to the CHL's, but most of those were in the 2000s, rather than since 2010. And that also doesn't include renovations like the newly announced overhaul of the Kitchener Rangers' Kitchener Memorial Auditorium. But for many, it does start to feel like an arms race.

The reason why? As much as it's nice to give fans a better viewing experience, a new arena with a host of new player- and coach-focused facilities is crucial to winning recruiting battles in the ever-evolving world of hockey as a whole.

This season, Union College and St. Thomas both opened new arenas, not just because their old ones were no longer ideal, but because doing so is a big part of making student-athletes' lives easier.

"Union College is a spot where they really invest in the student athlete and they take care of them," Chargers coach Josh Hauge said after Friday's home game against UMass Lowell. "I think this building is just a statement that, 'Hey, we want to support our student athletes,' and then I just think having all the facilities right here, it makes it a lot easier for them to come in, get their work in and then, you know, get back to doing their homework, and having a social life."

Schools now invest hundreds of millions in these efforts, not just for hockey, but for all sports. 

Sacred Heart coach CJ Marottolo recently told Elite Prospects that his athletic department invested "maybe $100 million" in on-campus upgrades for athletes and the general student body alike, including the Pioneers' $70-million Martire Family Arena, which opened in January 2023. Previously, Sacred Heart played at community rinks and, for a time, the cavernous Total Mortgage Arena, long-time home of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers/Islanders, which is about 15 minutes off campus. The change that comes with a brand-new facility was immediate and enormous.

"We're able to attract maybe a higher caliber athlete that we would not have been able to before, playing in a local rink," Marottolo told Elite Prospects. "
And with social media today, everybody's seeing our rink, even if they haven't been there. So when you get on the phone talking to recruit, [they're saying], 'I've seen that. That looks cool.' 
So it piques their interest and we're able to get into a deeper dialogue with kids."

The same is true at UConn, where the Toscano Family Ice Forum opened on the Storrs campus. It bore a similar price tag to Martire, seating about 1,400 fewer fans, but the change was huge. For years, the Huskies had played about half an hour up the road in Hartford, and while they regularly drew big crowds — sometimes stretching into five digits — it was still a bit of a pain for the team to just not have that kind of on-campus facility.

And while Toscano, Martire, or Union's M&T Bank Center are nice for fans, they're even better for players.

"It wasn't like a 30-second walk to get from, you know into the training room, to get into the weight room," Hauge said. "Everything was kind of all over [campus]. So now, guys can get their meal and then after that, if they want to take a hot and cold tub, it's right next to them. If they want to go stretch and roll out on the turf or get a lift in, it's all right there."

That's just standard operating procedure now when you're building a new rink or updating an older one. Everything is centralized, everything is top-of-the-line, everything is built around convenience and, perhaps just as much, building team camaraderie.

"I think certainly when you bring a recruit here now, they see a venue where they can develop and the beautiful weight room and recovery area, shooting rooms, locker rooms, lounge, where in the past for us, kids just came to practice and left," said Huskies coach Mike Cavanaugh. "They didn't hang around the rink. 
So I think the one thing that it's done is our players are around the rink a lot more now."

Coaches also say that it's not just paying dividends on the recruiting trail, either. Touring these facilities clearly make an impression, and Marottolo says multiple players that thought about playing for Sacred Heart prior to Martire opening, but then went elsewhere, circled back when they entered the transfer portal.

"You create relationships in the recruiting battle and you don't win them, and then they go somewhere that doesn't work out for them," he said. "Now, you're able to pick up the phone, [and they say,] 'Oh, yeah, we had a good relationship and you have the rink. 
All right, let's go.'"

Players uniformly talk about these changes in glowing terms and when you tour the facilities it's easy to see why. And now this isn't just about winning a recruiting battle against colleges, it's also about doing it against the CHL or foreign developmental leagues as well. And some who have experienced both say that the newer college facilities — even at North Dakota's Ralph Engelstad Arena and Boston University's Agganis Arena, which opened in 2001 and 2005, respectively, but have had numerous upgrades over the years — tend to rival those of NHL teams.

Having everything under one roof, and more fan-friendly, is great. Obviously. But coaches also say it's just part of the formula that comes with building a sustainably successful college hockey program.

"At the end of the day, if you're going to come to Union, you're going to come here because relationships matter," Hauge said. "We don't have 35 guys committed. We have a smaller list. It's a place where you come in and if you have a bad day, we're going to be there for you and keep supporting you and we're going to keep working with you, and we have all these extra resources. I think everybody gets caught up in a lot of different things in college hockey right now, and I think the way you treat people matters, and it should matter in the recruiting process. And I don't think it always does right now. We're trying to do it that way."

Atlantic Hockey

One of the low-key Big Series in college hockey this weekend was Holy Cross at Air Force.

The Crusaders entered the weekend 5-1-1 in conference play with a 29-13 goal difference, but got on a plane to take on a Falcons team that had won four straight, and five of their last seven.

If Air Force could hold serve on home ice, it would potentially upset the balance at the top of the Atlantic Hockey standings. But Holy Cross did not let that happen.

They outscored the hosts 7-3 in a sweep and even if Air Force probably had the better of the play on the whole — they had more shots and expected goals, drew more power plays, etc. — they don't give you any standings points for that. So now the AHA table says "Holy Cross in a runaway," five points clear of the team behind them, with only one loss in nine league games. (Bentley, which got only two out of six points from independent Alaska-Anchorage on home ice this weekend, is technically still ahead on points percentage with three games in hand.)

The Crusaders only have one more league game between now and the holiday break, but right now they are pretty definitively The Team To Beat.

Keep that Bentley/Holy Cross home-and-home on Jan. 2 and 3 circled on the calendar, though.

Big Ten

Alright, so we know the two best teams in this conference — and indeed, the entire country to this point. Michigan State No. 1, Michigan No. 2.

Not really a discussion for me at this point. I've seen them both live, I've seen them both on TV, and I've seen the stats.

No one else is doing what they're doing, as consistently or against such quality opponents. It's hard to see either one being knocked off that perch this season.

So the thing now has to be establishing who's sitting at Nos. 3-7 in the Big Ten, because this is shaping up to be a conference that will place a majority of its teams in the NCAA tournament. I think there's pretty definitively a pair that has the argument for third and fourth, and then your guess is as good as mine for fifth through seventh.

Going into the year it would have been an easy call for third. Penn State. No problem. And while they did split with Michigan this weekend, they got outscored 16-6 over the last four games. I don't think they Have It, even if they do seem like an NCAA tournament team kinda by default.

But what of Wisconsin? They're 8-2-2, and also split with Michigan recently. They definitely provided a better accounting of themselves than Penn State did against the Wolverines, especially because that split was in Ann Arbor. The underlying numbers are also significantly better than Penn State's, against a tougher schedule (both are currently top-10, though).

Personally I'm putting Wisconsin as the clear 3 here even if there's plenty of room for PSU to overtake them, just because of the ceiling their top talent comes with.

After those two? I guess you'd say Ohio State is probably fifth, but I don't think they're especially good, and that must mean Minnesota is sixth. Obviously the Gophers have not played well very often this year but they also have enough proof of concept with "they can be good" to put them ahead of a Notre Dame team that's currently 3-8-1. But the gap between Nos. 6 and 7 is smaller than it ought to be.

CCHA

After a bit of a poor start, Bowling Green looks like it's righting the ship.

The Falcons were expected to be one of the top teams in the CCHA this season and, after sweeping Ferris State this weekend, they at least have a share of the top spot in the conference.

But the path there was not as good as you'd probably like it to be: They have just one loss in their last eight games, but also three shootout results (1-2 in those) so they're leaving a few too many points on the table.

But you can't really argue how they did this weekend, absolutely hooping on those disappointing Bulldogs, by an aggregate score of 14-7. That said, it's tough to know what to make of them. They've beaten the two CCHA teams on the schedule that they should beat (FSU and Lake State), and they went 0-fer in regulation against the two teams they're supposed to be competing with for the top spot (Bemidji and Minnesota State).

Freshman Noah Morneau and senior Quinn Emerson share the team lead in points, and a few others aren't that far behind, but scoring has not been the problem. Goaltending has; every one of their three goalies has played between three and five games, and because no one can establish that they deserve to be The Guy, it seems like nobody is. They've allowed three-plus goals in half of their games, and that's just not gonna get it done most nights. I'd personally run with Jacob Steinman (.935 at 5-on-5, .908 overall) but he also gave up 5 on 26 in a win on Friday, so obviously there's a reason they seem to be casting about.

The good news is they have a huge territorial advantage over their opponents and a slight edge on the expected goals, so if they can tighten it up defensively, they should be juuuust fine.

The way things have gone, though, that might be a big "if."

ECAC

The aforementioned Union Garnet Chargers honestly might be able to call their beautiful new rink the second-best thing about their season so far.

After winning 19 games last year, there was a feeling they could take another step forward, but few expected a start like this. After sweeping non-conference visitors UMass Lowell and New Hampshire by a combined score of 13-1 this weekend, Union already has a record of 8-2-1, and there's almost no luck involved; their shares of shots and expected goals are among the very best in college hockey. They're posting nearly 41 shots a game and allowing fewer than 23, and that's just a great recipe to win a ton of games all season long.

"We want to have someone at the net, we want to have guys moving, we want to get our defenseman involved," Hauge said. "I think our D have really done a really nice job of leading from the back and keeping pucks alive and moving pucks quick. So we have pretty talented forwards and if you get the pucks in their hands, they're gonna make plays with it."

Special teams are uniformly great, 5-on-5 play even better. There's really nothing to complain about through the first six weeks of the year, and everything seems to just be going right for them on most nights. That can simply be a sign of luck, but not here. You don't luck your way to a plus-199 shot difference in 11 games.

"I think we have really good depth," Hauge said. "When you look at our lineup, up and down, every line can score, every line can be physical and play hard. So, I think it's to the point now where everybody knows the level we need to play at for us to be successful and they've bought into it, and when they work really hard, their skill shines through."

After this big weekend, Brandon Buhr (10-6—16) and Parker Lindauer (4-11—15) are both in the top 20 nationally in points, with Tyler Dunbar (4-6—10) tied for 10th among blue liners. But it isn't just those guys putting up points; 10 different Chargers have at least two goals, and all but three skaters have at least a point through 11 games

Buhr's double-digit goal total — four of them this weekend alone — comes after he put up 19 last year, and it's tied for fourth in the country alongside guys like Max Plante and Justin Poirier, who are getting some Hobey buzz. If this torrid pace continues, Buhr will certainly join them.

But again, it's not just him. Last year, Union averaged 3.1 goals per game, which placed them on the outer extremity of the top third or so of college hockey. This year, it's 4.0 goals per game, good for third through mid-November. And the crazy thing is, their shooting percentage is actually down from last season to this one.

"Pucks find their way in," Buhr said. "
I think just working hard, just getting on that puck every time, just doing the simple things and starting to pay off now. You can see that on the score sheet."

Maybe the single biggest change for Union, though, has come in goal. That had been a weak spot for the team the last few years, but Cameron Korpi transferred from Michigan, where he split time last season, and has (mostly) had a lot of instant success. Despite the increased workload, starting all but one of his team's games so far, he's only suffered a few rough outings, and hasn't let those performances linger.

"He never really gets flustered," Hauge said. "When there's a situation where things aren't going well, he either gets us a whistle or he makes a big save. So it's nice to have a goalie that can just settle everybody down. Luckily for us, we've got some good ones."

All told, Korpi is up to .927 with three shutouts, and 4.04 goals saved above expected. Can't ask for much more than that once you account for two of his starts being not so good. And again, after the most recent one, he bounced back to allow just one goal this weekend.

As for those poor games, both losses have come in ECAC play, so they've given up points they probably shouldn't have. But after both, the team bounced back with command performances, so all involved are confident they can keep the momentum going.

"We've had some growing pains here and everybody's gotten a little bit older, and just understanding how you have to play the win, I think we finally understand that a little bit," Hauge said.

Hockey East

Boston University had only one game this weekend but it's safe to say that game was enough of a disaster to put the Terriers on Fraud Watch.

How do I know? Well, apart from watching it and making that 😬emoji face for a good percentage of it, I read the quotes from coach Jay Pandolfo after the game.

Quotes like, "Pathetic, embarrassing. That's one of the worst games that I've ever been a part of."

Quotes like, "We're a very poorly coached team based off what I just saw. … Look at the way we play hockey. That's on me for not holding our guys accountable, not playing to a certain standard. Don't block a shot, don't cover anyone in front of our net, just let the team skate circles around us. Some of it has to be attributed to the way I’m coaching these guys."

Quotes like, "That was pathetic. There's nothing else to really say about it, really. … That was disgusting."

So, okay: Fraud Watch. This is a team that's been to three straight Frozen Fours, brought basically every big contributor from last season back, and then added strong transfer and freshman classes. So now they are 5-6-1, with four of those wins coming against unranked teams. Not that rankings are inherently worth paying attention to but they are an okay barometer for "do people think this team is good?" and for 80 percent of the clubs BU has beaten, the answer is "not really."

And you can say, "Well, the bounces maybe aren't going their way, and that can create the illusion that a team that's playing well is instead playing badly." Doesn't apply to the Terriers, I'm afraid. They've been outshot in all but three of their 12 games so far (minus-60 for the season), and expected goals have gone the same way (minus-6.6). Some of that can maybe be attributed to injuries to top players; Cole Eiserman just returned from a two-week absence, Sacha Boisvert previously missed three games, and third-line stalwart Nick Roukounakis just played his first game of the season. But that doesn't explain the power play running under 20 percent, or the team save percentage in the .880s.

I think coaches intend these kind of postgame quotes to kinda serve as deflector shields for their players' poor performances. The thinking being that if the team can look that bad collectively, it's not one or two or five guys who are the problem. But I've seen BU live twice, and on TV another three or four. They just plain ol' Look Bad. And if that persists to the point where we're almost to December, I'm totally willing to buy that this is a coaching thing as much as it is guys not executing.

But here's the problem for the Terriers beyond the poor start: It's not gonna get easier anytime soon. Next weekend, they have a home-and-home with a Northeastern team that's beaten Denver, BC (twice!), UMass, and Holy Cross. Then they're at Madison Square Garden against a Cornell team that has outscored opponents 17-9 in six games to date.

The good news? This team has the talent (and, frankly, coaching) to rip off like eight straight wins against opponents of any quality and assuage all fears. But they haven't shown it very much this year, so…

NCHC

Speaking of whether any conference races are already getting clear, in the absence of a truly huge story coming out of this conference, it's worth nothing that this was a wild weekend in the NCHC overall.

Conference leads that looked fairly safe are drying up already, and slowish starters we expected to be elite are starting to come around.

Denver, for example, took five of six points from Colorado College (not ideal for the Tigers, but the Pioneers are winners of five straight). Western Michigan unsurprisingly swept Miami, even though the Redhawks were 7-1-0 coming in. And crucially, North Dakota and Minnesota-Duluth only pulled off home splits with Arizona State and Omaha, respectively.

So it's pretty tight up at the top already, with a couple teams at .500 in conference play, and the rest a game or three below that. Western needed this weekend — and the six points — very badly, just to stay in the race, because it feels like Denver has its feet churning now, and NoDak got off to such a hot start. Three, maybe four of these teams are gonna make the national tournament, and you for sure don't want to leave it up to the autobid.

If you wanna say you're pretty sure North Dakota, Denver, and Western are three of those teams, I can't argue with you. UMD has certainly punched above its weight, but that top line and goaltending plus the wins they've already amassed plus their baseline means that, at worst, they're probably a bubble team.

Not a bad start overall, but it's never easy in this conference, either.

Indies

Gotta shout out Alaska-Anchorage here. They kicked off a grueling East Coast road swing this weekend with an OT loss and a win at Bentley, which is the kind of series result most Atlantic Hockey coaches would kill for.

But what's up next is crazy: Tuesday at Stonehill, Wednesday at Brown, Thursday at Holy Cross, then next Sunday they're at Holy Cross again. Not sure how many times in recent years a college team has scheduled a back-to-back-to-back regular-season run on the road, nor a run where they play six games in nine days. That is wild, but as I say a lot, that's life on the indies.

The Seawolves got goals from four different forwards — Ryan Johnson, Conor Cole, Tye Spencer, and Judah Makway — but the unequivocal No. 1 star was goalie Tyler Krivtsov. He got both starts this weekend, stopping 68 of 72 (.944) and you hope for his sake that he and the rest of his teammates are getting all the rest they can between Sunday and Tuesday night.

Tough stuff.