--- You wrote: ---
Moving up to Division 2 would not be an attractive solution for most
schools since there would be no national title possibility in the
offing. Now, maybe, if a bunch of schools did that, a Div 2 national
title game could be meaningful, but we all know that's not going to
happen.
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As Craig said, we are not talking about their hockey teams becoming D2, merely that the athletics department moves up to division 2 from division 3, where there is no prohibition on scholarships for D1 teams (so they would play D2 in everything but hockey, which would play up in D1 like they do now). It would not be a preferable option to staying D3 but with a D1 hockey team, but seems like a much better possibility and less costly than moving the entire athletic department to D1 with 1AA football. There are some high quality D2 programs that certainly do compete for national titles in most sports.

The fact that there is no D2 hockey should not preclude this possibility. Many  NCC schools have D1 hockey teams (SCSU, UMD, UNO, NoDak, Mankato, etc.)