2026 Frozen Four

[Russell Jaslow]

How many NCAA third place games did you attend? For the first one in 2001, the matchup was two rivals in Harvard and Dartmouth, and it was the first NCAA Frozen Four, so there was at least some interest on the part of the teams. By 2005, it was obvious that the hearts of the teams just wasn't in it. The whole thing was just so flat, that it did nothing to improve the sport. They discontinued it because the players didn't want it.

The D3 women were the last to get rid of it. I heard their players actually wanted it, because they tried to get rid of it earlier. They wanted an extra game to play. But ultimately, it was just too worthless to keep around. (On a side note, I witnessed the last D3 men third place game. It was brutal. Almost made Slapshot look tame...)

 

[Russell Jaslow]

Oh, I guess I wasn't patient enough.

Yeah, they had technical difficulties the first seven minutes.

 

[Still Eeyore]

I attended the last men's D1 third place game, between Maine and Michigan State in 1989. It was the most boring hockey game I've ever attended. There were multiple defensemen, from both teams, that just skated in circles between the blue line and the face-off circle rather than following the play. The year prior, the game was a penalty fest as Maine and Minnesota took out their frustrations of having been the #1 and #2 teams in the country all season, and then both losing in the semis.

I do not miss third place games.