Turns out, the Big Ten adding hockey is shaking everything up. Now, at least 6 other major hockey programs are going to form a new conference called the National Collegiate Hockey Conference. It will include Miami of Ohio, Denver, Colorado College, North Dakota, Minnesota-Duluth and Nebraska-Omaha. Also in talks with the NCHC are Notre Dame and Western Michigan, with the Irish playing a key role in the potential of the conference landing a TV deal with NBC/Versus.

Northern Michigan is going to move from the CCHA to the WCHA, in order to keep the latter at the minimum of 6 teams required for an automatic NCAA tournament berth. Also remaining in the WCHA will be Alaska-Anchorage, Bemidji State, Michigan Tech, Minnesota State (Mankato), and St. Cloud State.

The CCHA will be in big trouble if Notre Dame and Western Michigan indeed move to the new NCHC. The CCHA would only have 4 teams left - Alaska-Fairbanks, Bowling Green State, Ferris State and Lake Superior State. Perhaps in order to better compete with the Big Ten and NCHC, the WCHA and CCHA should just merge and create a large 10-team league.