Unlocking Manchester

The 2025 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament left little drama to its field announcement on Sunday afternoon. The statistical algorithm setting at-large bid combined with conference championship outcomes to determine qualifiers ahead of the national selection show, and the Saturday conference championships didn't move needles much beyond Western Michigan's elevation into a No. 1 seed. Boston College had long clinched the No. 1 overall seed despite losing its Hockey East quarterfinal matchup, and the only true bubble elimination occurred when Cornell's win over Quinnipiac in the ECAC semifinals dispatched Michigan.

Nobody expected fanfare or surprise, but that didn't stop the 2025 bracket from fielding one of the most competitive tournament fields. Hockey East tied its own 2016 record by sending six teams to the field, and the conference champions from ECAC, the CCHA and Atlantic Hockey America pared all brought bona fides capable of hanging with the resumes of a Big Ten or NCHC opponent.

BC's Manchester-based region in New Hampshire is an effective example. It's like other so-called "groups of death" and features four teams with solid strengths and complementary weaknesses. They all share the same dream, but understanding exactly how the four teams in the region advanced to New Hampshire contextualizes further why each has an opportunity to continue playing into April's Frozen Four weekend:

1) Boston College

How They Got Here: The No. 1 team in the Pairwise Rankings clinched its top spot with weeks remaining in the regular season, so losing to Northeastern in the Hockey East quarterfinal dampened little beyond watching a new team ascend to the TD Garden rafters. The single elimination nature of the conference postseason shocked more than a few people, but winning Hockey East's regular season championship might have been more impressive with the league's overall success.

Last NCAA Tournament Appearance/Trip to the Frozen Four: BC was last year's No. 1 overall seed after missing the tournament in 2022 and 2023, but little rust existed for the team that pounded Michigan Tech, 6-1, before defeating Quinnipiac, 5-4, in overtime. A shutout win over Michigan sent the Eagles to their 12th national championship game, but the 2-0 loss to Denver is a running undercurrent to the Pioneers' appearance in New Hampshire.

Season-Long Storylines: BC is unquestionably the best team in the nation when it's running on full throttle. Superstars dot every position on the line chart, and the number of players bound for the National Hockey League is staggering. The Eagles answered the bell earlier this year in their wins over Michigan State, Western Michigan and Maine, and they absorbed nearly every opponent's best shot dating back to those games in October. Even the loss to Merrimack looked like a blip after BC pounded Harvard, Providence and Boston University.

There's always a tendency to overanalyze and hyper-examine losses, but piling the Beanpot and Hockey East losses onto a single-elimination regional is almost unfair to a team that consistently answered the bell throughout its second half. Even the losses felt like a case of the "yeah buts" since UMass needed the win to even claim space in the national tournament race at the time, and the No. 1 seed was already well sewn up when UNH dragged BC to a shootout. Even then, the shootout win put the Eagles in position to clinch the Hockey East championship without help where a loss would've given Maine the inside track to the top seed.

2) Providence

How They Got Here: The fifth-best Hockey East team in the Pairwise Rankings still finished in the No. 8 spot in the Pairwise Rankings. The fifth-place finisher in the league went 21-10-5 on the season before losing a Hockey East quarterfinal showdown at Connecticut, but like BC, the Friars clinched their national tournament spot long before Maine raised its banner at TD Garden. Their RPI performance also kept them at a No. 2 seed, which ensured last change in the first round matchup against Denver.

Last NCAA Tournament/Frozen Four Appearance: This year is Providence's first NCAA Tournament appearance since advancing to the Frozen Four in 2019. The one-time national champions in 2015 (from that game against Boston University) were at the tail end of six straight tournament appearances when Minnesota-Duluth eliminated them, but the surprising note from that run is how Nate Leaman's team won exactly one conference regular season championship and never clinched a Hockey East postseason crown.

Season-Long Storylines: Providence looked like a team bidding to jump into the conversation for a No. 1 seed in the tournament after its December swing produced a resume pairing wins over Arizona State and Colorado College with a number of near-misses against teams like Connecticut and Boston College, but a February downturn sent the Friars spiraling into the lower tier of the Pairwise top-10. Splitting with Boston University didn't help the aftermath of the Maine series, and a late season thumping from the Terriers prevented them from ever moving north of the No. seed. The loss to UConn sealed them into the Manchester Regional, which had its positives and negatives while the Huskies won their way into an Allentown meeting with Quinnipiac.

Providence looks like the lowest key Hockey East team in the field. Of the six bids, Boston College holds the No. 1 spot and Boston University won the Beanpot while Maine and UConn just advanced to the Hockey East championship. UMass won its way into the field with a surge through the last month. The Friars, meanwhile, aren't a top-ranked offense or defense and don't possess a highly-touted power play or penalty kill. None of its top scorers are near the top of the field, and goalie Philip Svedeback almost never had to make 30 saves in a single game.

That doesn't exactly jump off a page, but that's also PC's modus operandi. The 2017-2018 team, for example, only averaged around a half-goal more on offense than it allowed, and none of its leading scorers edged past the 20-goal stage during a season that finished with the No. 2 seed. Yet that team advanced through the first round before moving to the Frozen Four one year later as a No. 4 seed.

3) Denver

How They Got Here: The defending national champions finished third in the NCHC before advancing to last weekend's conference championship game in arguably the best league outside of ECAC. Wins over Northeastern anchored common opponent victories for the Pairwise Rankings, and the overall strength of the conference buoyed a 15-win season against the seven other league teams. Aside from a few hiccups, the Pioneers beat everyone and took Western Michigan to double overtime before the Broncos finally won their first NCHC title.

Last NCAA Tournament/Frozen Four Appearance: This is better left unsaid. All that's worth mentioning is that Denver is the all-time leader in NCAA hockey championships and twice won it all in the post-COVID era.

Season-Long Storylines: It's hard to replicate national championship rosters, so it's even harder to note how split results drove a wedge in Denver's top-ranked plans. Excluding the two games against Miami, consecutive series against Arizona State, Western Michigan, Colorado College, Maine, Minnesota-Duluth, Omaha, Arizona State again, North Dakota and St. Cloud all ended without six points heading back to DU between Thanksgiving and the end of the season. The second-ranked overall offense and ninth-ranked defense kept the Pioneers at an elite level, but the penalty kill dropped to a fraction ahead of the No. 20 spot while the power play continued rolling.

On a stat-by-stat basis, individuals at Denver are capable of going head-to-head with anybody in the nation. Matt Davis won 27 games in net, Boston Buckberger is one of the best plus-minus defensemen in Division I. Jack Devine, Zeev Buium and Aidan Thompson held three of the top four spots in total assists (the fourth being Gabe Perreault), and Sam Harris tied Cole O'Hara and Jimmy Snuggerud for ninth nationally in goals scored. Denver also balanced a 15-5-1 record at home with a 13-5-0 record in road games. The fact that they fell to No. 9 in the Pairwise made about as little sense as some of those results.

4) Bentley

How They Got Here: The Atlantic Hockey America champions beat Holy Cross, 6-3, to close out five consecutive wins in the conference tournament. The 23-win team has more wins than five of the at-large teams and had to win a best-of-three semifinal and a single elimination championship game on the road. Atlantic Hockey is usually a one-bid league, but the Falcons took UMass and New Hampshire to one-goal losses at the start of the season before beating Maine in the Black Bears' annual game in Portland.

Last NCAA Tournament/Frozen Four Appearance: Bentley hadn't advanced to the conference semifinals in 16 years until this year's team swept Canisius at home, so getting to the NCAA Tournament was off the table for close to the entirety of the team's two-decade existence in Division I. That's not to say there hadn't been success, but the Falcons were especially prone to weird collapses and goblin-based curses after their 2006 loss to Holy Cross sent the Crusaders to the tournament for their eventual upset win over Minnesota.

Season-Long Storylines: Boston College goaltender Jacob Fowler is the front-runner for the Mike Richter Award as the nation's best Division I goaltender, but all of his statistical dominance over the rest of the nation failed to include a number of shutouts. Even with seven in his back pocket, Bentley's Connor Hasley enters the national tournament with 11 clean sheets and three goose eggs in the postseason. He wasn't Atlantic Hockey's Goaltender of the Year, but Bentley's defensive style and commitment to blocking shots makes this team exceptionally dangerous for offensive-based teams.

There really hasn't been a bad outing for Bentley, and they survived a problematic swing through January that resulted in one point at Niagara and a home weekend sweep against Holy Cross that at least gave them one point from a 3-2 overtime decision. Those five points were ultimately the difference in pushing Holy Cross across the finish line as the No. 1 seed, but it wound up not mattering when the Falcons won the conference championship game.

Aside from Hasley, forward Ethan Leyh produced a 40-point season, and both Nik Armstrong-Kingkade and Nick Bochen are on the verge of 30 points. Just under a dozen players are at 15 points or more, but the hallmark of the team is still its defense, which is the first team without a goals against average under 2.00. Ranking fifth behind Minnesota State, BC, Maine and Michigan State is no joke, though the offense and special teams open windows for opposing teams to tilt the ice against Bentley's biggest strength.

Players Mentioned

Jacob Fowler

Gabe Perreault

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