The 2022 CCHA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament was the 43rd tournament in the history of the men's Central Collegiate Hockey Association. The first tournament held after the revival of the conference, it began on March 4 and ended on March 19, 2022. All games were played at home campus sites. Minnesota State won the tournament and received the CCHA's automatic bid for the 2022 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament.
The first round of the postseason tournament features a best-of-three games format, while the semifinals and final are single games held at the campus sites of the highest remaining seeds. All eight conference teams participated in the tournament. Teams are seeded No. 1 through No. 8 according to their final conference standings, with a tiebreaker system used to seed teams with an identical number of points accumulated. The higher-seeded teams each earned home ice and hosted one of the lower-seeded teams. The teams that advance out of the quarterfinals are reseeded according to the regular season standings. The semifinals and final are single-elimination games. The winners of the semifinals play one another to determine the conference tournament champion.
Following a 1âÂÂ1 tie after regulation, the Beavers and Mavericks headed to overtime. What ensued over the next 90 minutes would be dubbed as one of the most bizarre events in college hockey history. Three minutes into overtime, MSU freshman Josh Groll scored what was believed to be the game-winning goal. Celebrations ensued as the Mavericks held a trophy presentation and skated around the ice with the Mason Cup. Meanwhile, a Bemidji State student watching the game at home noticed on a replay that the puck appeared to go into the net not through the front of the net, but rather underneath the net. If true, this would mean that the goal would not count and the game should have continued. The student sent a video of this to a friend on the team, who then showed it to Bemidji State's coach Tom Serratore in the visiting locker room. Upon seeing the video, Serratore would go back out onto the ice where the Mavericks were still celebrating to show the video to Mike Hastings and CCHA commissioner Don Lucia. The Maverick players would head back to the locker room, though shortly after, Lucia called a meeting with Hastings and Serratore to inform them they would review the goal. After it was confirmed as a no-goal, the teams were informed they would need to continue playing. After a trophy presentation and celebration, the CCHA Tournament championship resumed 79 minutes after Groll's non-goal. Just over three minutes after the game resumed, Minnesota State would score the true game-winning goal, ending the game for real.
This series of events sent reverberations throughout the college hockey world. While Minnesota State was a lock for the NCAA tournament by virtue of their pairwise ranking, Bemidji State would have needed to win the game to clinch an automatic bid to the tournament. Thus, had the Beavers won the game, they would effectively be stealing a bid from a school vying for an at-large bid, in this case, Northeastern. Luckily the resumed game led to the same result, but had the game resumed with Bemidji winning, there was talk in the Northeastern athletic department about potentially suing the CCHA over what would have cost them a tournament berth. The controversial decision to resume the game led the NCAA to clarify that a game must officially end after the referees leave the ice.
<small>Note: * denotes overtime periods</small>
<small>Note: All game times are local.</small>