1991 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey tournament explained

The 1991 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament was the culmination of the 1990–91 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey season, the 44th such tournament in NCAA history. It was held between March 15 and March 30, 1991, and concluded with Northern Michigan defeating Boston University 8-7 in overtime. All First Round and Quarterfinals matchups were held at home team venues with the 'Frozen Four' games being played at the Saint Paul Civic Center in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Qualifying teams

The NCAA permitted 12 teams to qualify for the tournament and divided its qualifiers into two regions (East and West). Each of the tournament champions from the four Division I conferences (CCHA, ECAC, Hockey East and WCHA) received automatic invitations into the tournament with At-large bids making up the remaining 8 teams. The NCAA permitted one Independent team to participate in the tournament and because the previous year the independent qualifier was placed in the East pool the two western conferences (CCHA and WCHA) would split only three open spots as opposed to the East's four open spots. The top four remaining eastern teams and the top three remaining western teams received invitations and were seeded with the automatic qualifiers according to their ranking.

East							West
Seed	School	Conference	Record	Berth type	Appearance	Last bid	Seed	School	Conference	Record	Berth type	Appearance	Last bid
1	Maine	Hockey East	30–8–2	At-large bid	5th	1990	1	Lake Superior State	CCHA	35–3–4	Tournament champion	5th	1990
2	Boston University	Hockey East	25–10–2	Tournament champion	17th	1990	2	Northern Michigan	WCHA	34–5–4	Tournament champion	4th	1989
3	Boston College	Hockey East	27–10–0	At-large bid	18th	1990	3	Michigan	CCHA	32–7–3	At-large bid	14th	1977
4	Clarkson	ECAC	25–7–2	Tournament champion	11th	1990	4	Minnesota	WCHA	28–7–5	At-large bid	18th	1990
5	Providence	Hockey East	23–10–8	At-large bid	7th	1989	5	Wisconsin	WCHA	26–13–3	At-large bid	12th	1990
6	Cornell	ECAC	17–9–3	At-large bid	10th	1986	6	Alaska-Anchorage	Independent	20–15–4	At-large bid	2nd	1990

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Format

The tournament featured four rounds of play. The three odd-number ranked teams from one region were placed into a bracket with the three even-number ranked teams of the other region. The teams were then seeded according to their ranking with the top two teams in each bracket receiving byes into the quarterfinals. In the first round the third and sixth seeds and the fourth and fifth seeds played best-of-three series to determine which school advanced to the Quarterfinals with the winners of the 4 vs. 5 series playing the first seed and the winner of the 3 vs. 6 series playing the second seed. In the Quarterfinals the matches were best-of-three series once more with the victors advancing to the National Semifinals. Beginning with the Semifinals all games were played at the Saint Paul Civic Center and all series became Single-game eliminations. The winning teams in the semifinals advanced to the National Championship Game.

Tournament Bracket

Note: * denotes overtime period(s)

First round

(W4) Minnesota vs. (E5) Providence

Quarterfinals

(W2) Northern Michigan vs. (W6) Alaska-Anchorage

Frozen Four

National Semifinal

(E2) Boston University vs. (E4) Clarkson

National Championship

(W2) Northern Michigan vs. (E2) Boston University

Scoring summary
Period	Team	Goal	Assist(s)	Time	Score
1st	align=center style=";"	BU	Ed Ronan		align=center		align=center	1–0 BU
	align=center style=";"	BU	David Sacco		align=center		align=center	2–0 BU
	align=center style=";"	BU	Ed Ronan		align=center		align=center	3–0 BU
2nd	align=center style=";"	NMU	Dean Antos	Werenka and Beattie	align=center		align=center	3–1 BU
	align=center style=";"	NMU	Mark Beaufait	Melone and Soukoroff	align=center		align=center	3–2 BU
	align=center style=";"	NMU	Scott Beattie	Melone and Scott	align=center		align=center	3–3
	align=center style=";"	NMU	Darryl Plandowski	Frederick	align=center		align=center	4–3 NMU
	align=center style=";"	NMU	Scott Beattie	unassisted	align=center		align=center	5–3 NMU
3rd	align=center style=";"	NMU	Scott Beattie	unassisted	align=center	43:08	align=center	6–3 NMU
	align=center style=";"	BU	Dave Tomlinson		align=center	45:59	align=center	6–4 NMU
	align=center style=";"	NMU	Darryl Plandowski	Soukoroff	align=center	48:24	align=center	7–4 NMU
	align=center style=";"	BU	Tony Amonte	McEachern	align=center	52:24	align=center	7–5 NMU
	align=center style=";"	BU	Shawn McEachern	Amonte	align=center	54:51	align=center	7–6 NMU
	align=center style=";"	BU	David Sacco	Tomlinson	align=center	59:21	align=center	7–7
3rd Overtime	align=center style=";"	NMU	Darryl Plandowski	Beaufait and Antos	align=center	81:57	align=center	8–7 NMU

Goaltenders
Team	Name	Saves	Goals against	Time on ice
align=center style=";"	NMU		align=center		align=center	7	align=center
align=center style=";"	BU		align=center		align=center	5
align=center style=";"	BU		align=center		align=center	3	align=center

All-Tournament Team

• G: Bill Pye (Northern Michigan)
• D: Lou Melone (Northern Michigan)
• D: Brad Werenka (Northern Michigan)
• F: Tony Amonte (Boston University)
• F: Scott Beattie* (Northern Michigan)
• F: Jean-Yves Roy (Maine)

* Most Outstanding Player(s)^[3]

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Notes and References

1. News: Northern Michigan Men's Hockey Team History. USCHO.com. 2014-08-27.
2. News: NCAA Division 1 Tournament . College Hockey Historical Archives . 2013-06-19 . https://web.archive.org/web/20140202145059/http://augenblick.org/chha/ncaa_trn.html . 2014-02-02 . live .
3. News: NCAA Division I Awards . College Hockey Historical Archives. 2013-07-17.
4. News: NCAA Frozen Four Records . NCAA.org . 2013-06-19 . https://web.archive.org/web/20120817163005/http://fs.ncaa.org/Docs/stats/frozen_4/2009/f4recs.pdf . 2012-08-17 . live .