The 2019 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey tournament was the national championship tournament for men's college ice hockey in the United States. The tournament involved 16 teams in single-elimination play to determine the national champion at the Division I level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the highest level of competition in college hockey. The tournament's Frozen Four – the semifinals and finals – were hosted by the MAAC at the KeyBank Center in Buffalo, New York from April 11–13, 2019. This was the second Frozen Four in the city of Buffalo, as it previously hosted in 2003.
This was the first championship since 2007 to have multiple programs make their first NCAA tournament appearance (American International and Arizona State).
Bowling Green State University made their first appearance in the NCAA tournament in 29 years, while for the first time since 1992 an Independent program (Arizona State) made the tournament.
The tournament is as remembered for the lack of attendance as anything that happened on the ice.[1] All semifinal and championship games had at least 5,000 fewer spectators than the building capacity (19,070) and the title game saw the lowest attendance since 2000. Though there was much discussion on the matter, a general consensus by fan bases was that the ticket prices of $200–$300 were far too high even for a championship game.[2]
The tournament is composed of four groups of four teams in regional brackets. The four regionals are officially named after their geographic areas. The following are the sites for the 2019 regionals:
[3]
The at-large bids and seeding for each team in the tournament were announced on March 24.[4] Teams were seeded according to their PairWise rankings (PWR) 1 thru 16 then matchups were adjusted to prevent teams from the same conference meeting in the first round. After the four groups were decided they were placed in regions as close, geographically, to the top seed as possible. The ECAC Hockey had four teams receive a berth in the tournament, the NCHC and Hockey East each had three teams receive a berth, the WCHA and Big Ten had two teams receive a berth, while one team from Atlantic Hockey received a berth. For the first time since 1992 an independent program, Arizona State, also received a tournament berth.
ESPN had US television rights to all games during the tournament for the fifteenth consecutive year.[6] ESPN aired every game, beginning with the regionals, on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNews, ESPNU, and ESPN3, which were streamed online via WatchESPN.
In Canada, the tournament was broadcast by TSN and streamed on TSN Go.
In the UK, the tournament was broadcast by BT Sport ESPN.
