One side of the Frozen Four bracket features teams that have combined for 12 national championships and 43 Frozen Four appearances.
On the other side, the national championships column is empty and Frozen Four experience is slight.
Boston University will play North Dakota in a semifinal matchup of two of the most accomplished programs in college hockey history. Providence and Omaha are matched in the other semi, with the Friars making their first Frozen Four appearance in 30 years and the Mavericks their first ever.
The Terriers and UND are both No. 1 seeds; Providence emerged from the East Regional as a No. 4 seed, while UNO was the No. 2 seed in the Midwest.
They’ll meet at TD Garden in Boston for the Frozen Four on April 9 and 11.
North Dakota leads the field with 48 NCAA tournament wins and seven national titles but hasn’t won one since 2000 despite seven Frozen Four appearances since. This is UND’s 21st time in the national semifinals overall.
Boston University won the 2009 national championship, its fifth, and is making its 22nd Frozen Four appearance. That’s third behind Michigan and Boston College.
Providence has made it to three Frozen Fours in the past, but the most recent was in 1985 when goaltender Chris Terreri led the Friars to the national title game, where they fell to Rensselaer.
Omaha was 0-for-2 in NCAA appearances before this weekend’s West Regional, but coach Dean Blais is a Frozen Four veteran, having led North Dakota to titles in 1997 and 2000 and a runner-up finish in 2001.
The Providence-Omaha game is scheduled for 5 p.m. EDT on Thursday, April 9, with North Dakota-Boston University following at 8:30. The championship game is at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 11. The semifinal games are on ESPN2, while the title game is on ESPN.
Boston University and North Dakota have met once before in the Frozen Four, with UND winning the 1997 championship game 6-4 in Milwaukee on the strength of a five-goal second period.
UND also won a 2005 first-round NCAA tournament game against the Terriers 4-0. Boston University advanced to the second round of the 1990 NCAA tournament by winning the last two games of a best-of-three home series against UND.
More recently, the Terriers went 2-1-1 in a two-season series completed over the previous two seasons. North Dakota won the first of those games behind Connor Gaarder’s only collegiate hat trick on Nov. 2, 2012, but BU won the next night in Grand Forks, then got a win and tie at home last season.
Overall, North Dakota leads the all-time series 12-9-2, including a 2-1 record on neutral ice.
The semifinal will be considered a neutral site, but the Terriers might as well consider TD Garden a second home.
Boston University is 4-0 this season at the home of the Boston Bruins, with championships in the Beanpot and the Hockey East tournament. Since the building opened in 1995, the Terriers are 40-16 there.
As a Hockey East team, Providence also is familiar with TD Garden, but its record is much less impressive.
The Friars lost Hockey East semifinal games there in 2012, 2013 and 2014 and haven’t won a game at TD Garden since a Hockey East semifinal win over Maine in 2001.
Omaha has won the only two games it has ever played against Providence, both in regular season tournaments. The Mavericks won 4-3 in overtime on Oct. 13, 2001, in the Omaha Cup third-place game. They beat the Friars 4-2 on Nov. 25, 2005, in the first round of the RPI Holiday Tournament.
