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 | |
| Association | NCAA |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1971 |
| Commissioner | Don Lucia (since 2020) |
| Sports fielded |
|
| Division | Division I |
| No. of teams | 9 (8 in 2026) |
| Headquarters | Deephaven, Minnesota |
| Region | Midwestern United States |
| Official website | ccha |
The Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) is a college athletic conference in the Midwestern United States that participates in the NCAA's Division I as a hockey-only conference. The current CCHA began play in the 2021–22 season; a previous incarnation, which the current CCHA recognizes as part of its history, existed from 1971 to 2013. Four of its nine members are located in the state of Michigan, with three in Minnesota and one each in Ohio and South Dakota. It has also had teams located in Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and Nebraska over the course of its existence.
The CCHA was disbanded after the 2012–13 season as the result of a conference realignment stemming from the Big Ten Conference (of which three CCHA schools; Michigan, Michigan State, and Ohio State, were primary members) choosing to sponsor Division I ice hockey beginning in the 2013–14 season. The remaining CCHA members received invitations to other conferences, such as the newly formed National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC), Hockey East, and the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA), which itself had been depleted by the Big Ten and NCHC. The conference's last game before its hiatus was the final of the 2013 CCHA Men's Ice Hockey Tournament at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit, where Notre Dame beat Michigan 3–1 to win the Mason Cup championship.
On February 18, 2020, seven schools who had applied to leave the WCHA announced they would form a new CCHA for the 2021–22 season, citing a more compact geographic footprint and a desire to improve regional alignment, among other reasons. St. Thomas, a former D-III school, joined them later that year as the CCHA's newest member as well as the conference's eighth team.