It has been a banner year for Hockey East.
Six teams qualified for the 16-team NCAA Tournament, which ties an all-time record of representation from one conference.
Hockey East had six teams in the 2016 field.
In addition, two of the teams are one seeds in Boston College and Maine. Three more — Boston University, UConn and Providence — are two seeds.
UMass is a third seed.
“Hockey East is good every year and it is even a notch better this year,” said UMaine coach Ben Barr, whose Hockey East Tournament champion Black Bears are the top seed at the Allentown (Pa.) Regional and will play host Penn State on Friday at 8:30.
The 11-team league has five of the top eight teams in the Pairwise Rankings: Boston College (1st), UMaine (3rd), UConn (6th), Boston University (7th) and Providence (8th).
And UMass was also in the top 10. The Mineutemen tied with Ohio State for 10th.
Three other Hockey East teams were in the top 25 among 64 Division I schools: UMass Lowell (19th), New Hampshire (21st) and Northeastern (24th).
Barr said the league’s teams won a lot of non-conference games and then “beat up on each other” over the second half of the season with everyone posting wins over their nationally-ranked conference rivals.
“And that’s good for the end-of-the-year rankings,” said Barr.
It is also good for their strength-of-schedule index.
Every Hockey East team won at least 13 games overall except Vermont, which won 11.
Hockey East has a record 133 NCAA Tournament field selections, which is 37 more than the next active conference’s number.
Two or more Hockey East teams have qualified for the Frozen Four in 15 of the league’s 40 seasons, including three times over the last nine campaigns.
The league had three in the Frozen Four once, in 1999 in Anaheim. Champion UMaine, runnerup New Hampshire and Boston College were in the field that year along with Michigan State.
At least one Hockey East team has played in the NCAA championship game in 21 of the last 32 seasons, including 10 times over the last 18 seasons and three times in the last five.
Hockey East had one team in the NCAA title game for eight consecutive years from 1997-2004 which is the most consecutive appearances in a title game by any conference since Hockey East began.
There have been three All-Hockey East finals.
Boston University beat Maine 6-2 in 1995 in Providence, UMaine edged New Hampshire 3-2 in overtime in 1999 in Anaheim and Providence bested Boston University 4-3 in 2015 at the TD Garden in Boston.
The National Collegiate Hockey Conference, which began play in the 2013-14 season along with the Big Ten, has won the most NCAA titles since its inception with six.
Hockey East and the ECAC each have two during that time.
