The Saint Louis Billikens men's ice hockey is an ACHA Division II

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 ...

team that plays in the Gold Division (D-II) of the

Mid-American Collegiate Hockey Association The Mid-American Collegiate Hockey Association (MACHA) is an ACHA club hockey league comprising colleges and universities in the Midwest. Organizational structure The MACHA is made up of three divisions, Gold, Silver, and Bronze. The Gold Di ...

History

Division I

Saint Louis University began sponsoring ice hockey as a Division I sport in 1970, partly to capitalize on the new

NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...

team, the

St. Louis Blues The St. Louis Blues are a professional ice hockey team based in St. Louis. The Blues compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference. The franchise was founded in 1967 as one of the ...

, that had begun playing only three years earlier. The Billikens were able to reach an agreement with Blues owner Sid Salomon Jr. to play their home games at the newly renovated St. Louis Arena, giving Saint Louis by far the largest home venue in the college ranks. Additionally the Billikens were able to secure the services of Bill Selman as

head coach A head coach, senior coach or manager is a professional at training and developing athletes. They typically hold a more public profile and are paid more than other coaches. In some sports, the head coach is instead called the "manager", as in assoc ...

. Selman had spent the preceding six years behind the bench for Minnesota–Duluth and

North Dakota North Dakota () is a U.S. state in the Upper Midwest, named after the indigenous Dakota Sioux. North Dakota is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba to the north and by the U.S. states of Minnesota to the east, So ...

, helping the Fighting Sioux to back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tournament in the mid-1960s. The biggest problem Saint Louis faced was finding a conference to compete in. At the time of their start there were effectively only two conferences at the Division-I level, one for eastern teams ( ECAC) and one for western teams (

WCHA The Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) is a college athletic conference which operates in the Midwestern United States. It participates in the NCAA's Division I as a women's ice hockey-only conference. From 1951 to 1999, it operated a ...

). Because Saint Louis was considered a western team (as were all teams not playing on the eastern seaboard) the Billikens were forced to play as an

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for their first season. In 1971 Saint Louis,

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and

Lake Superior State Lake Superior State University (colloquially Lake State, Lake Superior State, Soo Tech, and LSSU) is a public college in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. It is enrolls approximately 2,000 students. Due to its proximity to the Canadian border, and th ...

agreed to form a conference of their own called the

Central Collegiate Hockey Association The Central Collegiate Hockey Association (CCHA) is a college athletic conference that participates in the NCAA's Division I as a hockey-only conference. The current CCHA began play in the 2021–22 season; a previous incarnation, which the curr ...

(CCHA). the Billikens and Falcons began play straight away with the Lakers set to join the following year. The three teams also invited

Ohio State The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best public ...

and

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

into the conference. Saint Louis began well, finishing as runners-up in both the regular season and conference tournaments for the first year of league play. Saint Louis also served as the host for the CCHA tournament for the first six years of its existence. The Billikens began to hit their stride in 1972–73 when they won their first conference regular season title, winning the CCHA by 8 points and ending the year with a 27-win season (the best record in the history of the program). Unfortunately a 5–6 overtime loss to Bowling Green in the round-robin tournament meant they finished in second place once more. Spurred on by consecutive near-missed the Billikens won three straight CCHA tournaments in the mid-1970s and two additional regular season titles, placing them firmly atop the conference. Not everything was going well, however. Ohio and Ohio State had left the CCHA after only two seasons and, despite the addition of Lake Superior State, the CCHA was on life-support as a 3-team conference during that period. For both 1974 and 1975

Western Michigan West Michigan and Western Michigan are terms for an arbitrary region in the U.S. state of Michigan's Lower Peninsula. Most narrowly it refers to the Grand Rapids- Muskegon-Holland area, and more broadly to most of the region along the Lower Pen ...

had to be invited to fill out a 4-team bracket which only served to make few take notice of the Billiken's achievements. By 1975 Ohio State had rejoined the CCHA, however, and the conference seemed to be surviving. The next year the NCAA announced that it was granting the selection committee the ability to add up to 4 additional team to the tournament as it saw fit with the express purpose of allowing the CCHA to send a representative. Saint Louis, coming off three consecutive titles, won the 1976–77 regular season crown but fell to Bowling Green 4–5 on aggregate. The program was dealt a mortal blow that offseason when the St. Louis Blues were sold to

Ralston Purina Ralston Purina Company was a St. Louis, Missouri,–based American conglomerate with substantial holdings in animal feed, food, pet food, consumer products, and entertainment. On December 12, 2001, it merged with Swiss food-giant Nestlé's Fr ...

and the deal to use the Arena had to be reworked. The new arrangement was far more expensive for the university and when a budget crunch in 1978 forced the school to decide between keeping its ice hockey or

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

programs the board of governors allowed the axe to fall on the hockey team. Despite knowing the fate of the program Bill Selman remained with the Billikens for their final season in 1978–79 before it returned to club status.

ACHA

Since 1996 the Saint Louis Billikens have competed in the ACHA, playing in a variety of conferences.

Season-by-season records

All-time coaching records

Billikens in the NHL

Source:

References

External links

Saint Louis University Billikens Hockey
official website {{Central Collegiate Hockey Association