College Hockey Dynasty
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The Season

Rankings & the Postseason

NPI, Not PWR

This game uses the NCAA Percentage Index (NPI) — the ranking system that replaced the old PairWise (PWR) system for real Division I men's hockey starting in 2025–26. There's no selection committee picking teams by feel; the NCAA tournament field is the conference champions (automatic bids) plus whichever remaining teams have the highest NPI.

NPI weighs two things: your own record, and the strength of everyone you've played. Because that strength-of-schedule number depends on your opponents' own NPI — which depends on their opponents, and so on — the whole league's rankings settle out together rather than being calculated one team at a time. Strength of schedule counts for far more than your raw record, so who you beat matters more than how many you win: a signature win over a highly-rated opponent is worth chasing, and a bad loss to a weak team really does hurt. Your own non-conference schedule is one of the biggest levers you have over your strength of schedule, so who you choose to play matters as much as how you play them.

A few things that specifically move your NPI:

Conference Tournaments Come First

Every conference runs its own postseason tournament, and its champion earns an automatic NCAA tournament bid regardless of NPI. Conferences run different formats — some are single-elimination on the higher seed's home ice, some are best-of-three series, some reseed the survivors between rounds. Winning your conference tournament is the surest path to the national tournament; missing it means relying on an at-large bid, which comes down entirely to your NPI rank against everyone else who didn't win their own conference.

The National Tournament

Sixteen teams make the field: the automatic qualifiers plus the highest-NPI teams left over. They're seeded 1 through 16 and split into four regions, each built around one of the top four overall seeds, with placement adjusted so the bracket avoids same-conference matchups in the first round wherever it can. From there it's straightforward single-elimination: two regional rounds down to a Frozen Four, then the national championship, all at neutral sites. See How a Game Plays Out for how postseason overtime differs from the regular season — there's no shootout once you're here.

A deep tournament run pays off well beyond the trophy itself — see Program Prestige & Your Job Security and Finances for the prestige, legacy, and revenue bonuses that follow a postseason run.

See Also