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Frozen Four 2013: First time champion will be crowned Saturday

UMass-Lowell, St. Cloud State and Quinnipiac are all appearing in the Frozen Four for the first time. Yale has only one previous appearance, 61 years ago.

By Jeff Cox
St. Cloud coach Bob Motzko hopes to lead the Huskies to the school's first NCAA hockey championship.
St. Cloud coach Bob Motzko hopes to lead the Huskies to the school's first NCAA hockey championship.

A first time champion will be crowned Saturday night at the CONSOL Energy Center in Pittsburgh at the 2013 Frozen Four. None of the four school's competing in this year's event has ever captured a national championship.

UMass-Lowell had success at the Division II level in the early 1980s before elevating its program to Division I. Quinnipiac is a fairly new school that elevated its athletic programs just over a decade ago. St. Cloud was a program that always seemed to fall short of expectations in the post-season. Bob Motzko's team doubled their previous NCAA win total in the regionals. Yale is the only of the four schools to have ever made a Frozen Four before. The Bulldogs did so in 1952.

"It is wide open this year," said Motzko who has been to Frozen Fours before with Minnesota as an assistant coach. The theme throughout the four press conferences was that there is no favorite among the four teams.

Jeff Cox covers college hockey for SBNation. Follow him on twitter @JeffCoxSBNation coverage of the 2013 Frozen Four.