Men's Division I is a set of schools and conferences that sponsor men's hockey and abide by the National Collegiate Athletic Association's rules and regulations for Division I ice hockey. There are currently six conferences that sponsor Division I hockey:
- Atlantic Hockey
- Big Ten
- ECAC Hockey
- Hockey East
- National Collegiate Hockey Conference
- Western Collegiate Hockey Association
- The WCHA is now likely to disband as a men's conference after the 2020–21 season; eight of its 10 men's members have announced they will withdraw from the league after that season. Seven of these schools have announced they will start play in a revived Central Collegiate Hockey Association in the 2021–22 season.
These six conferences represent all but one of the 65 teams that compete at the Division I level in men's hockey. The Arizona State Sun Devils are Division I Independents. Division I represents the highest possible level of investment in hockey, and also the highest level of competition. If a school is a Division I institution, they must compete at the Division I level in all sports. However, several Division II and Division III schools choose to "play up" to Division I hockey, with the mechanics differing between D-II and D-III.
All NCAA members below D-I are allowed to "play up" in any sport that does not have a national championship for the school's own division. Since the NCAA abolished the Division II men's hockey championship after its 1998 edition, D-II schools have been allowed to compete as D-I hockey members under D-I rules. The Northeast-10 Conference, a D-II all-sports league, chose to continue playing under D-II rules; currently, six of its eight men's hockey schools play under D-II regulations, while the other two play in D-I as part of Atlantic Hockey. All other D-II men's hockey schools compete in D-I.
Since Division III has a men's championship, only D-III members covered by an NCAA grandfather clause are allowed to continue playing as D-I schools. A separate grandfather clause allows a subset of these schools to award hockey scholarships, a practice otherwise prohibited in D-III.