“It’s very easy to say, they ought to have it,” Stone said. “But that’s not necessarily the case all the time. There are things behind the scenes that sometimes make or break these decisions. You just sort of chip away at it. The hope is you give school’s like that every positive reason to start one instead of saying, ‘I can’t believe you didn’t do it.’”
Still Four Spots
Despite the fact that women’s college hockey has now expanded to 29 Division One teams and three leagues with at least eight teams (there is a fourth conference, the Great Lakes Women’s Hockey League with only three members), the number of women’s hockey tournament berths has remained static at four.
This means that just four of 29 (13.8 percent) of women’s hockey programs will reach the tournament. This is far below the average for NCAA Division One sports, which hovers around a target of about 20 percent. [See chart].
If the field were expanded to eight teams, the percentage would be well above the 20 percent rule of thumb at 27.6 percent. But a six-team tournament, with a participation rate of 20.7 percent, would be just right.
The number of teams in the national tournament has yet to change from 1998, when the first national tournament was held, there was no women’s WCHA, and women’s hockey was still listed as an emerging sport and not an official NCAA sport.
The four-team tournament produces a number of difficulties in terms of selection. With four teams, there is no room for automatic bids, so conference tournaments are no more relevant than regular season games.
It has also made for touchy issues in terms of selection decisions. Last year, Minnesota, the WCHA regular season champion and defending national champion, was left out of the Frozen Four in lieu of St. Lawrence who placed third in the ECAC regular season and tournament. The year before that, defending national champion Harvard was left out in favor of a Minnesota team it had beaten 7-3 during the regular season and a Dartmouth team that had lost five more games against a relatively weak schedule.
The selection decision is bound to be even more controversial this year, with only 13.8 percent of the schools making the field. It is very possible that one of the three major leagues might not have a tournament representative.
“There are a lot of teams out there who are going to be fighting for four spots,” Stone said. “And there are going to be a lot of good hockey clubs that don’t go. And that’s too bad because you want to showcase the sport.”
“I’m not sure it would be showcasing the best ability in the country if we were only able to have four teams,” Stone added. “If you’re trying to gain exposure for the sport you may want have a few more teams involved, so you’re getting people from different parts of the country.”
Soccer is the sport subject to the most recent tournament expansion this past year. The women’s field expanded from 48 to 64 teams, raising the percentage of teams in the tournament from 17.3 to 23.1. Softball, whose rate has fallen below 20 percent in recent years, is among those next in line for tournament expansion.
Women’s hockey tournament expansion appears to be coming in only a matter of time. But why it hasn’t happened yet is anybody’s guess.