Think you're ready for the 2019 Frozen Four? Think again. We scoured the teams' stat sheets and looked through 70 years of NCAA hockey history to give you 71 facts to know before this 71st Frozen Four.
FROZEN FOUR 2019: Schedule, bracket, scores and live updates
1. The 2019 Frozen Four is in Buffalo, N.Y.
2. The KeyBank Center is home to the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres and the National Lacrosse League’s Buffalo Bandits.
3. Buffalo is the second-largest city in N.Y.
4. This is the second time that the Frozen Four has taken place in Buffalo. The last time was in 2003.
5. This is the 11th time the championship has been hosted in New York. It’s also been played in Albany, Lake Placid, Syracuse, Utica and Troy.
6. In the 2003 championship in Buffalo, Minnesota defeated New Hampshire for a back-to-back championship win.
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7. Three sets of brothers are named on rosters in in this year’s championship. Providence’s Kyle and Matt Koopman, UMass’s Anthony and Marc Del Gaizo and Jackson and Noah Cates from Minnesota Duluth.
8. This is the first Frozen Four appearance for UMass.
9. Denver is currently enjoying the longest active NCAA tournament appearance streak, tallying the team’s 12th appearance this season.
10. The Michigan State men's hockey team has been to the Frozen Four one more time than the Michigan State men's basketball team has been to the Final Four.
11. The winningest NCAA swimming coach of all time is named Eddie. A coach named Eddie has never won the Frozen Four.
PREVIEW: Meet the teams in this year's Frozen Four
12. The longest stretch without an Ivy League team in the Frozen Four came from 2004-2012. Yale ended this nine-year drought when the Bulldogs made (and won) the 2013 Final Four.
13. Denver is the furthest team from Buffalo at 1,526 miles. Minnesota Duluth follows at 1,008 miles, Providence at 449 miles, and UMass 385.
14. Three of the past four national champions are competing in the 2019 Frozen Four.
15. Massachusetts' Filip Lindberg won a gold medal with team Finland at the 2019 IIHF World Junior Championship.
16. Providence goalie Hayden Hawkey and Minnesota Duluth’s Hunter Shepard are both finalists for the Mike Richter Award, which honors the most outstanding goaltender in NCAA men’s hockey.
17. Sophomore Minuteman defenseman Cale Makar is nominated as one of the three finalists for the Hobey Baker Memorial Award. He is the only nominee playing in the Frozen Four.
No one more deserving 👏
— UMass Hockey (@UMassHockey)
We are pleased to announce that our very own is a Hobey Hat Trick Finalist
📰: | 🚩
18. The mascots in this year’s tournaments are the Bulldogs, Friars, Minutemen and Pioneers.
19. In Frozen Four history, teams with an animal mascot have won the championship 78.57 percent of the time.
20. Head coaches named John have won the most Frozen Fours in history.
21. The longest Frozen Four game ever was a four-overtime battle between Bowling Green and Minnesota Duluth in 1984. Bowling Green won 5-4.
22. The most goals scored in a Frozen Four Championship is the 13-6 game when Colorado College beat Michigan in 1957.
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23. Cornell is the only team to have won the Frozen Four with an undefeated record.
24. Minnesota Duluth lost more games in its 2018 championship season than any other Frozen Four winner.
25. Maine won 42 games in 1993 when it won the Frozen Four. No Frozen Four champion has won that many games during the season since.
26. Minnesota Duluth is looking to become the first back-to-back champion since Denver repeated in 2004 and 2005.
27. A team has earned back-to-back championships seven times in the history of the Frozen Four.
28. Michigan is the only team to three-peat as national champions. They won in 1951, 1952 and 1953.
in 1998 Michigan won its record 9th NCAA National Championship!
— Michigan Hockey (@umichhockey)
29. The Bulldogs have been in back-to-back title games and could become the first team since Boston College (2006-2008) to play in three straight championship games.
30. Minnesota Duluth head coach Scott Sandelin is seeking his third national championship since taking over the program prior to the 2000-2001 season.
31. In his eighth season as head coach, Providence’s Nate Leaman hopes to claim his second national championship since taking over the program in 2011.
32. The Friars were a No. 4 seed when they won the national title in 2015. As a No. 4 seed again this year, the Friars are now the ninth No. 4 seed to reach the Frozen Four in the last 12 years.
33. Providence assistant coach Ron Rolston served as head coach of the Buffalo Sabres during the 2012-13 and 2013-14 seasons after coaching the Sabres’ AHL affiliate, the Rochester Americans, for two seasons (2011-13).
34. Friars’ forward Jack Dugan is the closest native of Buffalo, growing up in nearby Rochester.
35. Providence’s Tyce Thompson’s brother, Tage, has played for the Buffalo Sabres and currently plays for the team’s AHL affiliate.
BEHIND THE MASK: These are the coolest goalie masks in men's college hockey
36. Denver's David Carle is the fourth coach in the last 31 years (since the tournament expanded to 12 teams in 1988) to reach the Frozen Four in his first season as a head coach.
37. Carle is the youngest active head coach in NCAA DI hockey at 29 years old.
38. Minnesota Duluth's leading scorer has 18 fewer points than UMass' Cale Makar, the leading point-scorer in the Frozen Four. Minnesota Duluth and UMass have never faced each other before during Makar's career.
39. This is Greg Carvel’s third season as head coach. The team won five games in his first season. In his second season, 17 games. This year the Minutemen have a 30-9 record heading into the Frozen Four under Carvel.
DC 🎥 "I'm proud of the guys in the room and I know that they're hungry to continue to go and that we're not done yet"
— Denver Hockey (@DU_Hockey)
40. The Minutemen had the top sophomore class in the country, posting an NCAA-leading 75 goals, 119 assists and 194 points, 19% more points than the next-closest school (Penn State, 163).
41. Cale Makar is the highest NHL draft pick playing in the 2019 Frozen Four. He was selected in the first round, fourth overall, by Colorado in the 2017 entry draft.
42. None of the Frozen Four teams have a top-10 ranked goal scorer in the country.
43. Fourteen Frozen Four national title games have gone into overtime. Including the semifinal games, there have been 101 overtimes games.
2019 TOURNAMENT: Follow the journey of each of the Frozen Four teams
44. Massachusetts nears the top in several national statistical categories, including: Penalty Killing percentage (4th, .875), Winning Percentage (3rd, .769), Scoring Offense (3rd, 3.77), Team Points (4th, 387), Team Assists (4th, 240), Power Play Percentage (2nd, .282), and Team Power Play Goals (2nd, 40).
45. Minnesota Duluth ranks fourth nationally in Scoring Defense (1.95), the highest of any Frozen Four team.
46. Since replacing UMass goaltender Matt Murray in the first game of the Hockey East quarterfinals, netminder Filip Lindberg has gone 4-1, allowed three goals on 93 shots and posted three shutouts.
47. Providence and Minnesota Duluth previously met in the tournament was 2016, when the Bulldogs pulled off a 2-1, double OT upset in the regional semifinal over the top-seeded Friars.
48. Providence has nine NHL draft picks on its roster, the most of any team in the Frozen Four.
In part one of This is Week in Friars Hockey we catch up with , and leading up to this week's in Buffalo!
— PC Men's Hockey (@FriarsHockey)
49. UMD head coach Scott Sandelin holds the best career NCAA playoff winning percentage (.760) of any active coach.
50. Several alumni from 2019 Frozen Four teams have gone on to have successful NHL careers. Seven players from Minnesota Duluth have won at least one Stanley Cup, while six from Providence, four from Denver and two from UMass have had their names etched on the cup.
51. Massachusetts’ and Denver’s goalies are both named Filip.
52. The last time UMass played Denver was in 2013. The Minutemen faced a 3-5 loss. Massachusetts has never beaten Denver.
53. UMass has never played Minnesota Duluth. The Minutemen have a 25-48-6 record against Providence.
TOURNAMENT INFO: Tickets, schedule of events
54. Providence last faced Minnesota Duluth in 2016. The Friars have a 7-16-2 record against the Bulldogs. The Friars have a 9-6-2 record against Denver.
55. The most shutouts in an NCAA tournament is five (2004, 2006). The 2019 tournament has already matched that record with five shutouts in regional action.
56. Massachusetts has the most wins (30) and best winning percentage (.750) of any Frozen Four team.
57. Minnesota Duluth enters the Frozen Four on a six-game win streak.
58. Minnesota Duluth and Denver both belong to the NCHC. Providence and Massachusetts are in the Hockey East Association.
59. Over the last 20 seasons, Hockey East has represented 28 of the 84 Frozen Four qualifiers. The NCHC has boasted 10.
60. The longest game in NCAA tournament history was the 2000 Saint Lawrence vs. Boston University East Regional, a quadruple-overtime game lasting 123:54. That game is also the second-longest game in NCAA DI men’s history, missing the top spot by 5:77.
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61. Since 1985, the overall average number of goals per game per team is 3.5. So far this tournament, the average is 2.1 goals.
62. Denver has a .690 winning percentage in Frozen Four games. Minnesota Duluth has a .583 winning percentage and the other two teams rank at least below .525.
63. The most goals scored by a team in the Frozen Four was Colorado College’s 23 tallies in 1950. Providence scored a combined 10 goals in its two NCAA regional games.
64. Denver's David Carle is the fourth coach since 1988 to reach the Frozen Four in his first season as a head coach. Brad Berry was the last to accomplish this feat in 2016, when he led North Dakota to the national title.
65. Eighteen players in the Frozen Four are from Minnesota. Eleven are from Massachusetts. Ten are from California. Nine are from Ontario. Two are from New York. One player is from Iowa.
66. The shortest two players in the Frozen Four measure 5-foot-7. The two tallest players measure 6-foot-6.
67. Thirty-four of the 105 players named on school rosters are freshmen. Fifteen are seniors.
68. In the last six years, three teams have won a program’s first national title.
69. The largest championship-game crowd (non-Ford Field) in history was the 19,783 people that packed the United Center in Chicago for Denver’s 2017, 3-2 win over Minnesota Duluth.
70. Denver’s Jarid Lukosevicius and Providence’s Josh Wilkins lead the Frozen Four field with 19 goals each.
And the last thing to know before this year's Frozen Four?
71. On Saturday, a 71st national champion will be crowned.
