Modifications are coming for Division I males’s and ladies’s faculty hockey applications, the NCAA just lately introduced.
Starting this season, groups can schedule exhibition video games in opposition to different Division I groups with out in search of a waiver from the NCAA.
As well as, groups will have the ability to begin their full practices per week earlier.
Division I groups are allowed to have eight hours of observe per week in September — 4 hours on the ice and 4 hours off the ice — earlier than that expands to twenty hours per week the primary full week of October.
Now the lads’s applications will have the ability to soar from eight hours to twenty hours for the final week of September. The ladies’s applications begin per week sooner than the lads.
Groups normally play one exhibition sport the primary week of October, usually in opposition to a Canadian faculty.
UMaine was scheduled to play the College of Prince Edward Island in an exhibition sport this previous season however journey restrictions brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic compelled the sport to be canceled, because it did for different exhibitions between U.S. groups and Canadian faculties.
Faculties had been allowed to guide an exhibition in opposition to one other U.S. workforce. UMaine wound up taking part in Quinnipiac from the ECAC.
UMaine head coach Ben Barr mentioned the 2 adjustments “aren’t an enormous deal, nevertheless it does provide you with extra flexibility and that’s factor.”
He mentioned the exhibition sport rule gained’t make that huge of a distinction for UMaine as a result of it’s simpler to schedule Canadian groups.
“Each faculty will deal with it in another way,” he mentioned. “It’s not a nasty factor.”
UMaine has normally performed Canadian faculty groups from the Maritime provinces, particularly powerhouse the College of New Brunswick, which has gained eight Canadian nationwide championships.
“Within the huge image, whether or not you play an exhibition sport in opposition to the College of New Brunswick or the College of New Hampshire, there are professionals and cons to each,” Barr mentioned.
He mentioned getting an additional 20-hour week isn’t a serious growth as a result of they normally get the work they should get in throughout an eight-hour span in the course of the week anyway.
A unbroken growth in Division I faculty hockey is the addition of latest applications.
Lindenwood College from St. Charles, Missouri, will start play this coming season as will Stonehill Faculty (Massachusetts) and Augustana College in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, will begin within the fall of 2023 and will probably be within the Central Collegiate Hockey Affiliation.
Lengthy-established applications Alaska-Anchorage and Robert Morris didn’t have groups this season, however each will probably be returning throughout the subsequent two seasons.
Lengthy Island College and St. Thomas College from St. Paul, Minnesota, simply got here on board throughout the previous two years.
LIU’s first season was 2020-21 and St Thomas’ was this previous season.
“The extra groups the higher,” Barr mentioned. “There are sufficient good hockey gamers on the market.”
