Neumann University Men’s Hockey enters the 2025-26 season ranked #1 in the MAC Coaches’ Preseason Poll (Photo by Hunter Martin Photography)
Our season previews continue as the 2025-2026 Men’s & Women’s Division III hockey regular season nears closer. Today, we look at the men’s side of a league in its second year as an auto-bid league, the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC).
The MAC features:
Alvernia
Arcadia
King’s (PA)
Lebanon Valley
Misericordia
Neumann
Stevenson
Wilkes
2024-2025 Overview
Last season, we saw the inaugural season of the MAC as an auto-bid-eligible league. The MAC has been around for some years now but did not have its own league for hockey. The MAC members who had hockey programs, competed in the UCHC alongside the full-time UCHC members. The MAC did though, have their own “conference title” based on the regular season results, completely separate from the UCHC results.
Stevenson (18-8-2), coached by national championship-winning [Neumann 2009] Head Coach Dominick Dawes, the winner of five MAC titles since its origination, won the first ever auto-bid last season, defeating Wilkes (17-8-2) 4-1 in the conference finals after Wilkes won the regular season title. The Mustangs would go on to lose 3-1 to SUNY Geneseo (24-5-1) in the first round of the NCAA tournament, who would fall to the eventual ‘three-peat’ national champion Hobart (29-1-1) in the Frozen Four semifinal round.
Things weren’t so bright last year for the Mustangs in the first half of the season, holding a conference record of 3-4-1 and overall record of 6-5-1. They would then head to Italy & France to play four games in the month of December, to which seemed to be the turning point of the season as they finished the second half of the season with a stellar record of 12-3-1, earning themselves the #2 seed in the MAC playoffs (43 points).
Looking at the runner-up Wilkes, the Colonels and Head Coach Tyler Hynes still seek their first ever NCAA tournament appearance after missing out on an at-large bid by thousandths of a percent in the former PairWise system a few years ago. They’ve been on the doorstep every year, but weren’t able to breakthrough in UCHC, now in the MAC after year one.
Wilkes University Men’s Hockey (Photo by Steve Finkernagel)
The Colonels last season had a great regular season in conference play, earning the #1 seed in the MAC playoffs by eight points (51), finishing with a conference record of 16-3-2, in which two of their three losses came from Stevenson.
The next closest team to these two was Neumann, finishing with an overall record of 16-6-3, conference record of 13-5-3 (41 points), they’ll look to make a run on the national stage this season as they haven’t had much national relevance since their national championship in 2009 with HC Dawes as previously mentioned. They were voted #1 in the 2025-26 MAC Preseason Coaches’ Poll, very interesting results…
Returning Production
Looking at the league and the returning production via our guy Scott Huston, we find some interesting results:
Neumann’s #1 preseason coaches’ poll ranking does make sense when you consider the following factors that occurred this offseason. Stevenson’s ‘founding’ coach Dominick Dawes heads back to his alma mater Norwich University to take over the men’s program, therefore, the Mustangs will be led by Matt Bruneteau, who’s been as assistant with the program since 2016 when the program began. Stevenson only returns 54.27% of their total points, but their goal production is decent, returning 60.22%.
Wilkes, led by their ‘founding’ coach Tyler Hynes, loses a lot of production, only returning 58.16% of goals, 53.53%, & 55.22% of total points… The Colonels had their best shot at an NCAA tournament last season when the transition from the UCHC to MAC occurred, which meant Utica was no longer in the way.
Neumann on the other hand, returns 74% of goals, 66.47% of assists, & 69.26% of total points. The Knights have been in a pretty bad place in terms of wins / losses since 2017, compiling a record of 47-103-11 (.292). In his first season as the Knights head coach, Michael Hedden went 16-7-3, getting them to a place the program hadn’t seen since Matt Tendler in 2016-17 with some of Dawes’ recruiting class left. Look for Neumann to be a player this season in the MAC as they were last year, finishing 3rd by a 10-point margin to the 4th place team (Alvernia).
Speaking of Alvernia, they return a fair amount of production in 74.12% of goals & 72.54% of assists, losing a penalty-magnet player (95 minutes in 12 games) who shall be omitted from this article. They’ve put together some solid seasons since the program’s origination in 2019, coming off their best season of 14-10-2, look for them to make a run or become a challenger for a top seed in the MAC.
The teams at the bottom of the returning production tally would be King’s College & Lebanon Valley. The Monarchs return a mere 33.69% of total points and the Dutchmen return a mere 32.81% of total points, which includes only 27.08% of goals.
Dark Horses
I think this league doesn’t necessarily have a ‘dark horse’ simply based off the fact that the league doesn’t have far and away better teams from top to bottom. Everyone in this league outside of possibly 3-4 teams can win this and no one should be shocked. So, if we’re looking for a ‘dark horse’, it would be Alvernia since they’re a program that hasn’t been on the cusp of an NCAA tournament like Wilkes has, but they haven’t been a challenger in recent history, so you would have to put them in that same conversation if they did make a run and win the league.
Alvernia Men’s Hockey (Photo by Marisa Lombardo)
If you really want to talk crazy, we could consider Wilkes a ‘dark horse’ because even though they’ve been on the cusp as mentioned of an NCAA tournament, they haven’t made it, yet, but this season would be one where people would expect them to have a slight letdown due to the huge loss of production. We will see how it plays out in Wilkes-Barre.
I don’t see the bottom four from last season having enough to win the league, those teams being Arcadia, King’s, Lebanon Valley, & Misericordia.
Final Thoughts
My final thoughts on the MAC are that I’m intrigued by a few of the obvious possibilities that may come from this season. Does Stevenson stay on top after the departure of former HC Dominick Dawes? I, and many others, likely assume they’ll stay running hot as their replacement isn’t necessarily a replacement, the longtime assistant takes over [Matt Bruneteau] and they return a fair amount of production and leadership from last season.
Will Wilkes finally get over the hump and make an NCAA tournament? I would like to think they do, HC Tyler Hynes has put together solid teams that simply haven’t gotten over the conference playoff hump, they solved the regular season problems, but the conference playoff hump is yet to be climbed.
Does Neumann live up to the hype? Of course, within the program they hold themselves to a high standard and always enter every season with high expectations for themselves, but this season they’ve got legitimate publicly known expectations set from the preseason coaches’ poll. Will they be able to live up to that and make it to the MAC title game possibly? Maybe get the auto bid and dance for the first time since 2011?
And lastly, what effect does Alvernia have on the other three top teams and can they themselves challenge at the top? They’re a team not many are talking about and maybe they can use that as motivation to rattle off some big wins or maybe a weekend sweep of one of the other three… we will see!
