The 1971 NAIA men's ice hockey tournament involved four schools playing in

single-elimination A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...

bracket to determine the national champion of men's NAIA

college A college (Latin: ''collegium'') is an educational institution or a constituent part of one. A college may be a degree-awarding tertiary educational institution, a part of a collegiate or federal university, an institution offering ...

ice hockey Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hock ...

. The 1971 tournament was the third men's ice hockey tournament to be sponsored by the NAIA. The tournament began on March 6, 1971, and ended with the championship game on March 7. Bemidji State and Gustavus Adolphus attended the tournament for the fourth straight year while

Augsburg College Augsburg University is a private university in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It is affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It was founded in 1869 as a Norwegian-American Lutheran seminary known as Augsburg Seminarium. Today, the u ...

and

Lakehead University Lakehead University is a public research university with campuses in Thunder Bay and Orillia, Ontario, Canada. Lakehead University, shortened to 'Lakehead U', is non-denominational and provincially supported. It has undergraduate programs, grad ...

made the tournament for the first time. With the addition of Lakehead, the 1971 tournament marked the first occasion that teams from

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

made up the field. Bemidji and Lakehead, both members of the

ICHA The Icha (russian: Ича) is a river in Severny District of Novosibirsk Oblast, Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, N ...

, reached the championship game to make it the fourth straight that the title game featured two ICHA teams. Bemidji defeated Lakehead to win the team's fourth-straight NAIA championship.

Bracket

John S. Glas Field House, Bemidji, Minnesota Note: * denotes overtime period(s)

References

External links

NAIA ice hockey
{{National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics NAIA Men's Ice Hockey Championship

NAIA Ice Hockey Championship The National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) held a men's national ice hockey championship from 1968 to 1984 when ice hockey was dropped as an NAIA sport. Early history The NAIA Men's Ice Hockey Championship held a single eliminati ...