INDIANAPOLIS - At the latest meeting of the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Oversight Committee, the final vote for championship selection criteria was passed unanimously finalizing the use of the NCAA Power Index (NPI) for the 2025-26 season.
The NPI replaces the Pairwise, which had been in use since the 2013-14 season. One of the benefits of the NPI is that the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Oversight Committee now has the ability to adjust key pieces of the formula (dials) to enhance the selection process. Dials are set prior to the start of the competitive season and can be reevaluated on an annual basis if necessary.
“The committee is excited to implement the NPI for the 2025-26 season,” said Tim Troville, chair of the NCAA Division I Men’s Ice Hockey Committee and senior associate director of athletics at Harvard. “We spent months taking a deep dive into the numbers from each of the last four seasons with the goal of removing potential mathematical anomalies from the selection process. We had numerous discussions with conference commissioners and coaches and are really pleased with the process and the outcome. What we found was that there was virtually no difference in which teams qualify for the Division I tournament field, however, where teams were seeded did change slightly.”
The NPI functions in a similar way to the Pairwise, and the hockey committee spent hours comparing different calculations before finally settling on the dials. The dials include winning percentage, strength of schedule, quality win bonus points, a mechanism to deal with games that enter overtime and a minimum number of wins that must be factored into the rankings calculation.
The NPI dials for the 2025-26 season are as follows:
Win percentage / Strength of Schedule – 25%/75%
Home-Away Win/Loss – 1.2/0.8 (regular season), 1.0/1.0 (postseason)
Quality Win Base – 51
Quality Win Multiplier – 0.5
Overtime – 60/40 (regular season), 100/0 (postseason)
Minimum Wins – 12
In addition to the dials, the committee also elected to remove the requirement that teams earn a winning percentage of at least .500 to be considered for an at-large berth.
The 2025-26 Division I men’s ice hockey season begins on Oct. 3 across the country and culminates in the Frozen Four. The 2026 Frozen Four is scheduled for April 9 & 11 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nev.
