ECAC Northeast Tournament

History.
The ECAC Northeast Tournament began in 1972, after several teams formed the first third-tier ice hockey conference. For the first three years the championship was only a single game between the teams judged to be the top two in the conference. Because all games between ECAC teams regardless of division were counted the teams with the two best records weren't necessarily invited to play. In 1975 the tournament was expanded to 4 teams with one of the four chosen as the host. Host teams were dropped after 1977 with the higher-seeded teams playing at home afterwards. With the conference ballooning to more than two dozen teams, the conference tournament was expanded to 8 for 1984. Two years later the conference split into North and South divisions with each holding an individual 6-team postseason tournament and the two champions meeting to decide the conference champion. When the conference divided itself into three divisions for the 1992–93 season, the divisional tournament was scrapped and replaced with a single 8-team series. The top teams from each division were seeded 1-3 according to their overall conference records while the five teams with the best remaining conference records were seeded 4-8. In 1998 the conference abandoned divisional alignments but did not change the form of the conference tournament. A year later the four Division II programs in the conference played in a separate Division II tournament, allowing the remaining 14 teams to vie for the official ECAC Northeast championship with the champion receiving an automatic bid to the National Tournament.
See also.
ECAC 2 Tournament<br>Commonwealth Coast Conference ice hockey Tournament