1989 NCAA Division I Men's Ice Hockey Tournament
| Teams | 12 |
|---|---|
| Finals Site | |
| Champions | Harvard (1st title) |
| Runner-Up | Minnesota (9th title game) |
| Semifinalists |
|
| Winning coach | Bill Cleary (1st title) |
| MOP | Ted Donato Harvard |
| Attendance | 61,418 |
The 1989 NCAA Men's Division I Ice Hockey Tournament was the culmination of the 1988–89 NCAA Division I men's ice hockey season, the 42nd such tournament in NCAA history. It was held between March 17 and April 1, 1989, and concluded with Harvard defeating Minnesota 4-3 in overtime. All First Round and Quarterfinals matchups were held at home team venues with the 'Frozen Four' games being played at the St. Paul Civic Center in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The NCAA permitted 12 teams to qualify for the tournament and divided its qualifiers into two regions (East and West). Each of the tournament champions from the four Division I conferences (CCHA, ECAC, Hockey East and WCHA) received automatic invitations into the tournament with At-large bids making up the remaining 8 teams. The NCAA permitted one Independent team to participate in the tournament and because the previous year the independent qualifier was placed in the West pool the two eastern conferences (ECAC and Hockey East) would split only three open spots as opposed to the West's four open spots. The top four remaining western teams and the top three remaining eastern teams received invitations and were seeded with the automatic qualifiers according to their ranking.
The tournament featured four rounds of play. The three odd-number ranked teams from one region were placed into a bracket with the three even-number ranked teams of the other region. The teams were then seeded according to their ranking with the top two teams in each bracket receiving byes into the quarterfinals. In the first round the third and sixth seeds and the fourth and fifth seeds played best-of-three series to determine which school advanced to the Quarterfinals with the winners of the 4 vs. 5 series playing the first seed and the winner of the 3 vs. 6 series playing the second seed. In the Quarterfinals the matches were best-of-three series once more with the victors advancing to the National Semifinals. Beginning with the Semifinals all games were played at the St. Paul Civic Center and all series became Single-game eliminations. The winning teams in the semifinals advanced to the National Championship Game.
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