In response to the question on this, there actually is still a Division II
and some teams are classified as such, but there is no DivII national
tourney.  About 8 years ago the DivII national tourney was abolished because
there were not enough DivII teams left to justify holding a tourney.  Teams
that wished to play in a national tourney had to declare themselves as DivI
or DivIII.
 
The result was that most of the remaining DivII teams moved "down" to DivIII,
such as RIT, Union, Babson - most of the ECAC East and West teams did this.
A couple, like AIC, remained at the DivII level and chose not to participate in
the national tourneys.  And some, like Merrimack, Alaska-Anchorage, and
Alaska-Fairbanks, became DivI Independents.  In fact, for several years
Merrimack was a DivI Indep but still played in the ECAC East.  In 1988
Merrimack received the first Indep bid to the DivI tourney after winning the
ECAC East with a 25-0 record, 32-4 overall.
 
For several years, there were also schools like UConn, Holy Cross, and Iona
that were classified as DivI Indeps but played very few DivI games, in
contrast to the other Indeps.  A couple of years ago, a rule was instituted
to eliminate this as schools were forced to play at least 20 DivI games to
qualify as a DivI Indeps.  Since ECAC East/West teams also had to play 20
ECAC E/W games to play in those conferences, and the overall limit was 38
games, UConn, Holy Cross, etc. were no longer considered DivI Indeps.  In
fact, Merrimack had already decided to leave the ECAC East and play as a
full-fledged DivI Indep in the 1989-90 season before they were extended an
invitation to join Hockey East for that season; 1989-90 was the first season
that these new rules were to take effect.
 
For completeness, the rules came about because two sets of people were
unhappy with the then state of affairs.  DivI Indeps were unhappy that a
team like Merrimack could play a small number (~12) of DivI games but still
qualify as the top Indep and get a bid to the DivI tourney, while other teams
that played full DivI schedules were left home.  Merrimack clearly earned
its bid in 1988, as evidenced by its total-goals win over Northeastern (gulp)
in the first round and split its quarterfinal series at eventual national
champion Lake Superior despite losing the series to LSSU on total goals.  The
next year, Merrimack again rolled up a solid DivI record in about 20 fewer
games and lost the bid to St Cloud, which was .500 but was ruled to have
played a much stronger schedule.  (Merrimack also was a victim of the rule
that says teams missing key players can be left out; I've been told that the
committee told Merrimack that the fact that All-America goalie Jim Hrivnak
had been declared academically ineligible for the second semester was a
deciding factor in SCSU getting the bid over MC.)
 
The other unhappy group was the remainder of the ECAC E/W which had been
forced to try to compete with a team (Merrimack) which really didn't belong
in their division.  After Merrimack rolled up that 25-0 record, had an easy
time of winning the ECAC East (winning their three playoff games by a
combined 18-4 score) and almost completely dominated the East All-America
Team, the rest of the teams, aware that Merrimack wanted to remain in the
hunt for the DivI Indep bid (thus needing to play 20 DivI games), pushed
through their own 20-game rule without which a team couldn't play in the
conference tourney nor could they place players on the All-America Team.
 
A negative aspect of the elimination of the DivII tourney was that many
teams that were really of DivII caliber were now playing in the DivIII
tourney, and the previous DivIII teams (ECAC North/South, in this area -
Trinity, Connecticut College, Fitchburg) now weren't good enough to make
what was their tourney.  Their season now ends with the ECAC N/S Championship.
 
My understanding is that it was, guess who, the NC** who decided to eliminate
the DivII tourney since they were funding the tourney and had decided that
the number of teams competing didn't justify the expenses.  Perhaps some
sort of secession would allow a re-establishment of the old tourney
structure so that the old DivIII teams could have a real national championship
of their own, and teams like RIT, Point, etc. could return to compete on
their own level for what is really a DivII national championship that is
called DivIII.  For all intents and purposes, you can consider the ECAC E/W
to be "DivII" and the ECAC N/S to be "DivIII" as far as quality of play goes.
I am not sure whether one would consider all of the NCHA (Point, etc.) to
be of DivII caliber, although clearly some teams do play at that level.
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Mike Machnik        [log in to unmask]       [log in to unmask]