On the morning of March 12, I got a text from Matthew McGreevy, assistant director of athletic communications at Denver. He simply asked, "Are you planning on coming if we play this weekend?" At that time, the plan was still for the NCHC tournament to hold its quarterfinal games sans spectators, and then do the same for the Frozen Faceoff in St. Paul, Minn., an announcement the conference made on March 11 (photo: Candace Horgan).

“We’ll move forward and we’ll get everybody through it, hopefully. Maybe it’s nice to slow down a little bit. We’re so busy. We’re so caught up in everything” (photo: Jim Rosvold).

For Bowling Green, the 2019-20 college hockey season ended, not with a goal or a buzzer but, of all places, a mall parking lot (photo: BGSU Athletics).

It started out slowly, but then the hits kept on coming (photo: Jim Meagher).

Words like "historic" and "unbelievable" get thrown around a lot in the sports world, often at things that aren't really that historic or unbelievable. But in the case of the end of the 2019-20 college hockey season, they're absolutely appropriate, along with "gut-wrenching," "painful" and "devastating" (photo: Omar Phillips).

Little more than a month ago, Northeastern and Providence were riding high (photo: Rich Gagnon).

After losing the Great Lakes Invitational title game, Michigan owned a 7-11-2 record as the calendar flipped over to a new decade. Since then, the Wolverines have posted an 11-3-2 record (photo: Michigan Athletics).

Western Michigan’s 5-2 home win last Friday against Miami, combined with St. Cloud State’s loss that night against Minnesota Duluth, clinched a home-ice playoff spot for WMU. Another Bronco win Saturday kept Western in with a shot at qualifying for the NCAA tournament. The Broncos aren’t there yet, though (photo: Bradley K. Olson).

Sacred Heart is 15-4-2 since Thanksgiving, and AIC is 12-1 in its last 13 games with its only loss coming to the Pioneers. Three years after finishing next to each other in the standings, AIC and SHU did it again but this time as the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds (photo: Omar Phillips).

When the playoffs start in hockey, some players find an extra gear, an extra level, that they use to become heroes when their teams need them to. For Michigan Tech, that player is Tommy Parrottino (photo: Michigan Tech Athletics).

Princeton coach Ron Fogarty was happy to get a call from a reporter on Monday, a couple of days after his underdog Tigers swept Dartmouth on the road in the first round of the ECAC playoffs. ”It’s good to hear from you. It means we’ve done something,’’ he quipped (photo: Princeton Athletic Communications).

Headed into last weekend, there was little reason to believe Miami would have any success, even if they were at home against Omaha, a team that had lost their leading scorer to injury and one Miami tied and defeated in November (photo: Bradley K. Olson).