Let’s be honest: college sports aren’t that good in New England. This isn’t Alabama, Florida or Mississippi. There just isn’t a ton of good college sports teams in the area.
There’s one exception though: college hockey. Let’s be real, there’s probably not a better region in the country for college hockey than right here.
Looking at the rankings on the NCAA’s website today (from USCHO.com), here is a look at some top-20 teams nationally who call New England home:
No. 3 Quinnipiac 9-3-1
No. 4 Boston College 10-3-1
No. 6 UMass Lowell 8-4-2
No. 7 Boston University 6-4-1
No. 9 Harvard 5-1-1
No. 20 Vermont 7-3-2
That’s a good year for college hockey. Definitely some talented programs in the New England area. To put it this way, three of the four top-10 teams in the nation are Beanpot (seriously, where are these Boston Baked Beans I have never had?) schools. Northeastern University is the only Beanpot school not on the list. But it gets better. You see five of the top-1o teams in the nation are all New England schools? Yeah. That’s pretty interesting. And yes, Quinnipiac is in Connecticut.
Looking at this list too, it seems weird that BU is not having a better year than they are. Honestly, they probably should be the best team in the nation. They’re probably the most talented, after all.
Providence College and UConn also received votes in the rankings.
In the women’s rankings, there’s also some good New England teams, three in the top-10, in fact. Here’s a look at those:
No. 6 Boston College 9-3-3
No. 8 Quinnipiac 10-4-2
No. 10 Northeastern 10-3-3
And to answer your question: I think there’s 60 men’s college hockey programs and 35 women’s teams. But there’s a lot of teams in New England, so yeah, it’s definitely worth the look, peeps. Wouldn’t lie to you about that. Have covered it before and it’s good stuff.