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The new hockey conference being planned by seven soon-to-be-former members of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association will adopt a familiar name.
Consultant Morris Kurtz revealed today that the league will be called the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. The original CCHA was active from 1971 to 2013. It shut down when some of its members joined some WCHA schools to form the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. At that time, the remaining CCHA schools consolidated into the WCHA.
Last year, the seven Midwestern members of the WCHA announced they would leave the league, and form a new conference. The group includes Michigan Tech, Northern Michigan University, Lake Superior State University, Bemidji State University, Bowling Green State University, Ferris State University, and Minnesota State University, Mankato.
Alabama-Birmingham has also announced its intention to leave the WCHA, but has not been included in the new CCHA at this time. That will leave the University of Alaska campuses at Fairbanks and Anchorage as the only men’s teams remaining in the WCHA. The WCHA also has a women’s division.
Kurtz says the new conference is on track to begin play in October, 2021. He hopes to have a commission in place by July 1, 2020. A new logo and new imaging are also being developed.
Michigan Tech was a member of the old CCHA from 1981 to 1984. NMU spent two stints in the league, from 1977 to 1984, and 1997 to 2013. LSSU was in the CCHA from 1972 to 2013.
