Gustavus Adolphus Men’s Hockey wins the 2025 MIAC Conference Championship. (Photo by Breeley Ruble – Gustavus Sports Information)

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 the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (MIAC).

The MIAC features:

Augsburg
Bethel
Concordia (Minn.)
Gustavus Adolphus
Hamline
Saint John’s
Saint Mary’s
St. Olaf
St. Scholastica

2024-2025 Overview

Last season we saw first year Head Coach Tyler Walsh lead his Gusties to victory, taking the regular season and conference titles, making the NCAA tournament for the first time since the 2011-12 season. Gustavus finished 16-10-2, falling to St. Norbert 3-2 in round one of the NCAA tournament.

The MIAC has always had a special place in my heart and many others out east should take notice of it. It’s simply the Big12 in college football of D-III hockey… Anyone can win it, preseason rankings / projections mean nothing, meanwhile, no one is surprised at all when the winner is eventually determined.

At the end of last season, there was an error in the final standings leading to some semi-chaos where the MIAC had to release a statement of a correction/clarification regarding the final tiebreakers. Here’s the final standings from last season at the conclusion of the regular season and tell me again about how this isn’t arguably the most fun conference in D-III…

MIAC men’s hockey standings at the conclusion of the 2024-2025 regular season. (Standings via DIIIHockeyNews.com)

Yes, you read it right, a three-way tie for fifth and a two-way tie for third place. You may notice the overall record are less than impressive, but that’s the beauty of this league which is a gift and a curse. The gift being, we’re given exciting hockey every night in the MIAC, but the curse is that for the time being, it’s rare we’ll see two bids come from this league due to their lack of non-conference variety and strength. They mostly stick to the WIAC and some NCHA, but being so far west, the non-conference variety lacks at times. However, we’ve seen more east-west play in recent years.

Another thing to note, only a six-win difference between first and last place in a league is legitimately crazy.

Bethel University Men’s Hockey (Photo by Ashlee Mortenson)

Lastly, former St. Olaf Head Coach Eddie Effinger accepted the job at his alma mater Amherst College (NESCAC) this offseason, the Ole’s promoted assistant coach Tyler Lindstrom to Head Coach, we will see how the Ole’s fare in year one after their assistant of three seasons takes the helm.

Returning Production

Looking at the league and the returning production via our guy Scott Huston, we find some interesting results:

Bethel leads the way in returning production, they come in with 86% of scoring and 74% of assists, while the defending champions Gustavus returns 65% of both scoring and assists.

The team with the least production coming back is the Cobbers of Concordia Moorhead, who return a mere 46.35% of total points, with Hamline and Augsburg close-by, returning about 54% apiece. The Auggies & Pipers finished in the bottom two spots of the standings last season as referenced by the standing’s graphic above, so the lack of returning production is interesting because one could say it’ll be harder to improve, but if you were bottom of the league last season, maybe a refresh is what they need? Concordia will need to clean up the penalties if they want to make a run at anything, last season they were the 19th worst team in penalty minutes, with 301 penalty minutes, averaging 11.15 per game.

Men’s Ice Hockey: Hamline University Pipers vs. University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire Blugolds (Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com)

Another side note: St. Scholastica has eight countries on the roster as of now, that’s light for them as it seemed as though they had half the world on the roster a few seasons ago.

Dark Horses

It’s hard to say there’s a dark horse in this league as everyone is a dark horse, that’s the fun of the league itself. I personally like Gustavus and Bethel a lot, they should both be really good and battling it out for the top of the league. However, I think a Saint Mary’s or St. Scholastica could sneak up on some folks and steal an auto bid.

St. Scholastica was on a roll a few seasons ago (2023-24), starting the season 10-0-0, but failing to keep the momentum going in the second half of the season, finishing the year 15-10-1.

Saint Mary’s has improved the past three seasons as they failed to win double-digit games from 2017-2022, but won 11, 10, 11 the past three seasons respectively. We will see if the Cardinals can make a move and return to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 1995, which is crazy to think.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I don’t think much has to be said for my final thoughts on the MIAC. Gustavus and Bethel open as the early favorites, but again, there’s never a favorite in this league. I love the conference and west hockey.

I think it’ll be another season with only one lone bid coming from this league, which is a shame, but I don’t necessarily disagree with the math here, as for example last season, nobody had a record acceptable for an at-large, regardless of your leagues’ strength. However, I do believe this league is put at an overall disadvantage due to the lack of ability to play a variety of non-conference games with their geographical boundaries.

Let’s have another great season and I’ll get to see some MIAC hockey in person November 13-16!