What to know about NCAA Frozen Four: top players, field, schedule, TV

MADISON – Wisconsin will get a taste of nostalgia at the Frozen Four on April 9 and then maybe make some history. When the Badgers men’s hockey team takes the ice for its first national semifial appearance in 16 years, it will do so against an old rival from its days in the WCHA: North Dakota. A UW win plus a Michigan victory over Denver would set up the first championship matchup of teams from the Big Ten since Bob Johnson’s Badgers defeated Minnesota in 1981.

Back then, however, the Big Ten didn’t have a hockey conference so those teams played as members of the WCHA. Badgers coach Mike Hastings, who grew up in Crookston, Minnesota, watching the league, explained what it was like during its heyday. “You were able to get in a car and drive to Duluth.

You were able to get in a car and drive to North Dakota,” Hastings said March 31. “The old WCHA was a geographic footprint that was manageable. You weren't driving out to [the airport] and getting on a plane.

That was different back in the day, so you had those rivalries that were based on communities and universities that had tried to beat the heck out of each other for decades. ” That was Wisconsin and North Dakota for years, but the teams have played just 10 times since the 2012-13 season. In 2013-14, UW joined the Big Ten and North Dakota joined the National Collegiate Hockey Conference (NCHC).