The Big Ten men’s hockey tournament will be shifting to a two-week, single-elimination format beginning in March 2026, with all games played on campus.
Since 2018, the default format for the tournament included a three-weekend format with a best-of-three first round quarterfinal, followed by single-game weekends of semifinal and championship games at campus sites.
The coming regular season will now conclude Thursday-Friday, March 5-6, 2026. With the regular season now ending one week later, Jan. 2-3, 2026, will be considered a nonconference weekend.
The Big Ten quarterfinals will be held on Wednesday, March 11, with the No. 2, 3 and 4 seeds hosting the No. 4, 6 and 7 seeds. The No. 1 seed will have a bye to the semifinal round like in years past.
Semifinals will take place on Saturday, March 14, hosted by the No. 1 seed and the highest advancing seed from the quarterfinals.
The championship game will be held on the weekend of March 20-22 and hosted by the highest remaining seed.
The first Big Ten tournament was held in 2014, with all six teams playing at a championship site for a three-day, single-elimination tournament. The top two seeds earned a first-round bye that season. Wisconsin won that inaugural tournament in 2014 with a 5-4 overtime win over Ohio State at Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minn.
The format remained the same until 2018, when it shifted to a three-weekend format with all games taking place on the campus of the higher-seeded teams. The quarterfinals were a best-of-three series, with the top seed receiving a first-round bye. The semifinals and championship game were single elimination. The tournament format remained this way, aside from a special format in 2021 due to COVID-19, until the 2025-26 season.
