Middle Atlantic Conference

The Middle Atlantic Conference is an NCAA Division III all sports league that began sponsoring men's and women's ice hockey in the 2017–18 academic year.

The conference is actually an umbrella organization consisting of three separate conferences — the Middle Atlantic Conference, MAC Commonwealth, and MAC Freedom. The overall organization has 18 all-sports members, evenly divided between MAC Commonwealth and MAC Freedom. The Commonwealth and Freedom leagues sponsor the same set of 14 sports (counting men's and women's teams separately), while men's and women's ice hockey are among the 13 sports sponsored by the Middle Atlantic Conference.

The formation of the Hockey Conferences were announced on October 13, 2016. All five teams were previously announced as being members of the then 10-team United Collegiate Hockey Conference which was announced on October 4, 2016. The MAC uses UCHC conference games between MAC members to determine a MAC champion as opposed to being the exclusive conference for the teams, in a similar manner to the Ivy League, which uses the ECAC Hockey standings to determine its hockey champion.

Initial teams
The inaugural members were the King's Monarchs, Lebanon Valley Flying Dutchmen, Manhattanville Valiants, Neumann Knights, and Stevenson Mustangs.

King's was a new program (in men's and women's) that was announced in 2016 to begin play for the 2017-18 season.

Lebanon Valley men's program returned to D-III after playing in the ACHA (club level) from 2010 to 2016 after playing at the D-III level from 1999 to 2010. The women's program is new for the 2017-18 season.

Manhattanville has had men's since the 1999-2000 season and women's ice hockey since the NCAA started sponsoring D-III women's ice hockey in 2001-02.

Stevenson has had women's hockey since 2012-13 and the men's program started with the 2016-17 season.

Wilkes University announced on November 9, 2016 that they were delaying the start of play for the men's hockey team until 2018-19 due to the head coach they had hired (Michael Young) deciding to remain as the head coach Westfield State Owls. the school felt it would be in the best interest to delay the start to have time to hire a new head coach and give them a full recruiting cycle to develop a roster for the 2018-19 season.

On August 3, 2017 the Wilkes University Colonels announced they were delaying the start of the women's team until the 2018-19 season due to lower than anticipated roster size.

Expansion
On March 2, 2018 Alvernia University, based in Reading, Pennsylvania announced the formation of a women's hockey program to begin play with the 2019-20 season. The team is based out of the Body Zone and the Santander Arena which is also home of the Reading Royals of the ECHL.

The most recent change to MAC hockey membership came in July 2021 with the launch of new varsity men's and women's programs by Arcadia University. The next change to conference membership will be in 2022–23 when Alvernia adds a newly launched men's team to its existing MAC and UCHC membership.

Links

 * MAC men's hockey website
 * MAC women's hockey website