Washington High School Hockey is a co-ed sport, with teams divided into two leagues, the Western Washington High School Hockey League and the Tri-Cities High School Hockey League. Both leagues are divided into a division 1 and a division 2, and play through their own regular season. At the end of the season, the division 1 champions and the division 2 champions from each league play a single game championship against each other to determine the state champions in their respective divisions.
The Western Washington High School Hockey League is made up of 12 teams (representing 20+ schools due to cooperative team arrangements) based west of the Cascade mountains. Currently, there are 5 teams in Division 1 and 7 teams in division 2.
The Tri-Cities high School Hockey League is made up of teams east of the cascade mountains, and is currently maintained by the Tri-Cities Amateur Hockey Association.
The Tri-Cities are three closely linked cities at the confluence of the Yakima, Snake, and Columbia Rivers in the Columbia Basin of Eastern Washington. The cities border one another, making the Tri-Cities seem like one uninterrupted mid-sized city. The three cities function as the center of the Tri-Cities metropolitan area, which consists of Benton and Franklin counties. The Tri-Cities urban area consists of the city of West Richland, the census-designated places (CDP) of West Pasco, Washington and Finley, as well as the CDP of Burbank, despite the latter being located in Walla Walla County.
The Western Hockey League (WHL) is a major junior ice hockey league based in Western Canada and the Northwestern United States. The WHL is one of three leagues that constitutes the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) as the highest level of junior hockey in Canada, alongside the Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. Teams play for the Ed Chynoweth Cup, with the winner moving on to play for the Memorial Cup, Canada's national junior championship. WHL teams have won the Memorial Cup 19 times. Many players have been drafted from WHL teams, and have found success at various levels of professional hockey, including the National Hockey League (NHL).
An all-star game is an exhibition game that purports to showcase the best players of a sports league. The exhibition is between two teams organized solely for the event, usually representing the league's teams based on region or division, but sometimes dividing the players by an attribute such as nationality. Selection of the players may be done by a vote of the coaches and/or news media; in professional leagues, fans may vote on some or all of the roster. An all-star game usually occurs at the midpoint of the regular season. An exception is American football's NFL Pro Bowl, which occurs at the end of the season.
NCAA Division I (D-I) is the highest level of intercollegiate athletics sanctioned by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) in the United States, which accepts players globally. D-I schools include the major collegiate athletic powers, with large budgets, more elaborate and nicer facilities and a few more athletic scholarships than Divisions II and III as well as many smaller schools committed to the highest level of intercollegiate competition.
The American Collegiate Hockey Association (ACHA) is a college ice hockey association. The ACHA's purpose is to be an organization of collegiate affiliated programs, which provides structure, regulates operations, and promotes quality in collegiate ice hockey. The ACHA currently has three men's and two women's divisions and includes approximately 450 teams from across the United States and Canada. Most ACHA teams offer few athletic scholarships and typically receive far less university funding. The ACHA offers an opportunity for college hockey programs that struggle with large budgets and Title IX issues, as an alternative to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) financial structure.
Minnesota boys high school ice hockey is made up of multiple leagues and programs representing different associations. The two organizations associated with high school are the Minnesota State High School League and Minnesota Hockey. The Minnesota State High School League is a voluntary, nonprofit association of public and private schools with a history of service to Minnesota's high school youth since 1916. Minnesota Hockey, an affiliate of USA Hockey, is the governing body of youth and amateur hockey in Minnesota. Minnesota Hockey is governed by a board of directors and consists of approximately 140 community based associations who are formed into 12 districts.
The National Collegiate Roller Hockey Association (NCRHA) is an "incorporated not-for-profit corporation" which operates a national collegiate inline hockey league consisting of five divisions of competition. Headquartered in Torrance, California, the NCRHA is the national governing body of college inline hockey. The National Collegiate Roller Hockey Championships is held annually to determine the national champions at the end of each season.
This is a timeline of events throughout the five decade-plus history of the Western Hockey League (WHL).
The Western Conference is one of two conferences in the National Hockey League (NHL) used to divide teams. Its counterpart is the Eastern Conference.
The 1952 NCAA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament was the culmination of the 1951–52 NCAA men's ice hockey season, the 5th such tournament in NCAA history. It was held between March 13 and 15, 1952, and concluded with Michigan defeating Colorado College 4-1. All games were played at the Broadmoor Ice Palace in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Boys' ice hockey is a popular and growing sport in the state of New York. Culturally, ice hockey is a fairly well known sport throughout the state, especially Upstate New York - due in part to its cultural connections with Canada and Southern Ontario.
The Professional Inline Hockey Association (PIHA) is an "incorporated for-profit association" which operates an inline hockey league, with two conferences, of 11 franchised member clubs, all of which are currently located in the United States. Headquartered in Middletown, Pennsylvania, the PIHA is considered to be one of the premier inline hockey leagues in the United States. The Founders Cup Finals is held annually to crown the league playoff champion in the Pro and Minor divisions at the end of each season. PIHA also offers divisions for teens, & adults 35-and-over.
The Tier 1 Elite Hockey League (T1EHL), formerly Midwest Elite Hockey League, is located primarily in the Midwest United States and is the premier amateur youth hockey league in the United States. Players from all over the country move to the area where the teams are located to gain exposure and skill development needed for higher levels. Many of the league's top players go on to compete at the Major Junior, NCAA, and NHL level. The T1EHL showcase tournaments and games are heavily scouted by scouts from the USHL, NCAA schools, and the OHL due to the convenience of seeing many top players in one game or weekend.
Sports in New York's Capital District are very popular, and there is a rich history of professional teams and college athletics.
The Western Collegiate Hockey League (WCHL) is a Division 1 collegiate ice hockey league in the ACHA, which is the highest non-varsity Club Level for college hockey. The ACHL is made up of ten teams from the Western United States.
The Tri-State League was a NCAA Division I ice hockey-only conference. The league was the first attempt at creating a conference for hockey programs and, while it did not succeed in its goals, succeeding conferences were able to learn from the mistakes made and flaws in its design to form effective and long-lasting divisions.
ECAC 2 was an intercollegiate athletic conference affiliated with the NCAA's College Division. The league was created as a way to fairly divide the upper- and lower-class programs that had been members of ECAC Hockey. In 1984 the conference was split in two, creating ECAC East and ECAC West as completely independent leagues.
The Middlebury Panthers men's ice hockey team represents Middlebury College in men’s hockey and has done so since 1922. The Panthers currently play at the Division III and have won the most championships (8) of any D-III program. For a time the team did play along with top-level programs but when men's ice hockey divided into separate tiers in the mid-1960s Middlebury left the upper echelon.