College hockey’s grandest stage — the Frozen Four — won’t be heading to the world’s most famous arena, or at least not any time soon.
Just months after Madison Square Garden announced to U.S. College Hockey Online that it was extremely interested in hosting the Frozen Four, the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference — the intended host partner in the
bid — says the idea is on hold.
According to the MAAC’s director of championships, Ken Taylor, the conference and MSG could not pull together the application within the NCAA’s timeframe. It is anticipated that the NCAA will review bids shortly, potentially narrowing the field of finalists down by the end of this week.
“We are definitely planning on [making a bid] the next time around,” said Taylor. “It was too short a time frame to work out all of the details so we took a pass on it for the time being.”
Last month, the MAAC hosted its first ever NCAA hockey event, teaming with member schools Niagara and Canisius to host this year’s Frozen Four in Buffalo, N.Y. The event was the second-highest attended Frozen Four, behind only last year’s tournament in St. Paul, Minn.. The 18,759 attendance for the title game was the largest hockey crowd to ever see a hockey game at Buffalo’s HSBC Arena, out-performing the building’s primary tenants, the Buffalo Sabres.
Despite the inability to complete the application with MSG, the MAAC did submit two other Frozen Four applications as part of this application cycle for Philadelphia’s First Union Center and a repeat visit to Buffalo.
“There were too many questions that we couldn’t get answers to make it
doable,” said Taylor on the MSG bid.
