ECAC 2 tournament

The ECAC 2 Tournament was a college ice hockey conference tournament played from 1967 until 1984. For several years it was the only championship held for lower-tier college programs under the oversight of the NCAA and served as the de facto NCAA national championship until 1978.

History

ECAC 2 began holding a conference tournament for the 1965Ã¢ÂÂ66 season with four teams invited to participate. Even after 5 teams left in 1971 to form ECAC 3 the league's membership had risen from 15 to 24 teams in the interim and the championship was expanded to eight. When ECAC 2 reached 32 member institutions in 1977Ã¢ÂÂ1978, the league elected to stage separate 8Ã¢ÂÂteam tournaments for each of its two divisions rather than establishing a single 16Ã¢ÂÂteam competition (East and West). This was partly done to guarantee the two tournament champions automatic bids to the NCAA Tournament which began play the same year. Some schools, however, either had policies that barred them from appearing in national tournaments or were ineligible to appear in a Division II tournament due to being primarily a Division I or Division III school. This arrangement held for 6 years before the entire Division II level of college hockey collapsed after 1983Ã¢ÂÂ84 and ECAC 2 was formally split into two separate conferences the following season.