Coast To Coast is FloHockey’s monthly, cohesive news on North American hockey and live-streaming partnerships.

Seven months after playing its first league game, the CCHA announced an expansion from eight teams to nine, welcoming Augustana University of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, into the circuit as its latest member.

The Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) announced its 104-game conference schedule on Thursday. All eight CCHA teams will play a 26-game conference slate with the regular season champion being awarded the prestigious MacNaughton Cup, recognized as the premiere conference trophy in collegiate hockey.

After a season of unprecedented team and individual success, one that brought the Minnesota State Mavericks within 20 minutes of their first national title, the bubble burst Saturday night in Boston. The Denver Pioneers won their 9th NCAA title Saturday night by scoring five unanswered goals in a stunning 5-1 comeback victory.

Minnesota State senior goaltender Dryden McKay has been named the recipient of the 2022 Hobey Baker Award as the top player in NCAA Division I men's hockey.

Coast To Coast is FloHockey’s monthly, cohesive news on North American hockey and live-streaming partnerships.

For leading Minnesota State University into the 2022 Frozen Four, Mike Hastings has once again been chosen as the recipient of the Spencer Penrose Award as Division I Men’s Ice Hockey CCM/AHCA Coach of the Year by his peers. The honor is the third for Hastings, and his second consecutive selection. He joins only three other coaches who have won this award three times: Len Ceglarski, at both Clarkson and Boston College, Charlie Holt of New Hampshire and Jack Parker of Boston University

CCHA Commissioner Don Lucia, a guy whose coaching career ended after missing the NCAA tournament by one ten-thousandth of a point back in 2018, was finally in a position of power to execute postseason justice, inside or outside of the rules. He chose the latter, but he got it right.

After a season of more lows than highs, a season in which coach Tom Serratore saw his Bemidji State Beavers allow more goals than they scored, the veteran coach was finally in a position to relax Saturday night in Houghton. Serratore was enjoying the CCHA’s equivalent of a fireside chat after upsetting No. 2 seed Michigan Tech. The veteran coach was now front and center in a league press conference—his team sitting in the catbird seat, guaranteed a berth in the CCHA championship game while his opponents were still playing a timezone away in Mankato. Entering the night sub-500 was now a distant memory. His Beavers were on the precipice of making the NCAA tournament for the second year in a row.

On paper, this game should be no contest. But it’s played on ice.

With his Northern Michigan Wildcats loudly celebrating their grueling three-game quarterfinal of Lake Superior a few steps away, Cats coach Grant Potulny soberly assessed the next round in the CCHA playoffs: a single-game semifinal against the nation’s premier team, Minnesota State.

In the aftermath of calamitous events—typhoons, stock market crashes, building collapses and the like—investigators look back and usually find salient clues that could have tipped off the masses before the catastrophe: an ill wind, over-leveraged mortgage securities, a rusted out beam.

Northern Michigan broadcaster Dave Danis is a traveling man. He has driven all the highways and byways of college and minor league hockey—he knows the truck stops and the long stretches without any. As the CCHA’s regular season was counting down to its completion Saturday night, Danis was the first to sort out the reshuffled deck of the CCHA standings from his broadcast position at the Berry Events Center. That’s when it struck him that Bowling Green, ensconced in a home ice position all season long, had just fallen to sixth place, which made them a road club in the quarterfinal round. They would be facing Bemidji, which got the veteran road warrior doing some mental math.

In addition to the obvious competitiveness of a No. 4-No. 5 matchup, the fact that this series is a rematch of last year’s conference championship game makes for appointment viewing this weekend. The fact that these two teams were involved in a three-team race for the last home-ice berth—a pennant race that took until third period of the regular season finale—adds even more drama to a matchup that already has plenty.

Although this is the first Division I playoff game in the history of St. Thomas hockey, head coach Rico Blasi is in a very familiar place. For the 15th time in his career, he is leading his squad into the CCHA playoffs. A decade ago with Miami, Blasi won the same Mason Cup that his current peers are all fighting for today. Although his Tommies are not expected to survive this first round against national power Minnesota State, he will not go quietly into the night.