By: Joel Carlson

Arizona State University (ASU) moved their hockey team from club level to the NCAA D1 level and played its first full season against D1 teams in 2016-17. They weren’t good, but they were not the worst team out there. They planned on joining a D1 conference for this year but plans continuously fell through. Conference talks were abundant with National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC), Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), and the Big 10, with especially a lot of interest in joining the NCHC. They even went as far as announcing they were joining the NCHC, and then the NCHC said the terms weren’t finalized, so pretty much the NCHC said no again. Now ASU is playing another season not in any conference, the big questions are…where do they fit in? and who will even take them?

The clear choice was the one they talked to the most, the NCHC.

The teams are all at least as west as Michigan and the conference itself is strong. They like the colleges that have money and have more than one D1 sports team. The only problem with NCHC? They said themselves they aren’t expanding now, leaving poor ASU out in the cold.

A second choice was the Big 10, ASU and the B1G both didn’t seem interested in this partnership. The Big 10 just added Notre Dame this season expanding the league to 7 teams. To me this league seems like a good fit if both parties are interested. It’s a big money school with a lot of TV time. ASU would be able to jump in almost like Penn State who made the NCAA tournament for the first-time last year after only 5 seasons. ASU would complete the conference to 8 teams, all from larger colleges. Yet, the parties weren’t interested in coming together so B1G was out of the picture too.

Another choice for ASU would be to join the conference with the only other team that’s southern, Alabama-Huntsville, who’s in the WCHA conference. This conference looks like it would be a good place for ASU location wise. They would have less travel, other than going to Alaska, and it would be good competition with WCHA teams looking to get better this year.  

I think if ASU gets into a conference they can be a relatively good team.

They have a large fan base in the south who’s deprived of D1 college hockey teams. With the Sun Devils joining the D1 schools, who’s to say that the next school to join won’t be another southern school, Alabama has a strong club team and has the money to move up, too.

What do you think? Where does Arizona State fit in best and where should they go? What other colleges should get D1 hockey programs?