The conference will go to a 3-pod format. The pods are:
ASU/CC/Denver
Duluth/NoDak/St Cloud
Miami/Omaha/WMU
Play your pod home and away every season. For the six non-pod teams, play two home and away and four either home or away only.
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I like ASU as a new member. Good brand name, good team with fan support. Concerned about the rumors that this would be linked to a Miami exit, but doesn’t seem to be immediately true at least.
In terms of travel, I feel like this format is good. TBD, but if they were willing to schedule it so that you could have back to back road game weekends for non-pod series, travel really wouldn’t be bad at all.
Well we got a better deal pod wise… that middle pod wowza.
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See for everyone wanting to go back to the CCHA you get the CCHA pod for Miami.
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Phoenix makes a nice mid-winter weekend road trip option for Miami fans. With all the retired Chicagoland folks out there, I’ll be we have a decent alumni base in the Valley of the Sun.
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I believe we have ASU at home this coming season and away the next season already on calendar. So I assume that we’d keep ASU as an away series in 24/25?
Yeah, I was wondering about that too.
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This pod format is a bit of a bummer for me, since I assume it will mean less trips to Colorado. But on the other hand, PHX is usually a cheap flight and I’ll be an empty nester by then, so if we can turn it around enough to actually play competitive games, I could probably be persuaded to spend a weekend in Arizona in the middle of winter…
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I just broke down the matrix and adding a ninth team would only mean Miami won’t host or travel to two teams per year instead of one.
So with MU playing four conference road series against its six non-cluster opponents, the RedHawks will still face each foe two-thirds of the time instead of four-fifths.
Also, are you telling us the toddler in the icon is leaving home within a year? OMG do I feel old…
The Miami POD could add another former CCHA foe that could become available…?
Still a shorter trip than Fairbanks, but still far out west
After running into gbeckman at a game last season, I can confirm said toddler is definitely no longer a toddler. 
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Good info from Brad Schlossman here:
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So 1) confirmation that the league and Miami have had conversations about long-term alignment and 2) confirmation that Miami hasn’t asked to leave.
Correct. Miami will get a piece of the ASU entry fee pie, which isn’t huge but it’s a lot better than paying a huge exit fee to join a mediocre conference.
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There wasn’t a team East of the Mississippi that the NCHC could’ve added? Really?
The UAH program is still on hiatus, if memory serves me correctly. Lol
That cute little toddler is now a stinky awkward (but kinda awesome) 17 year old. 
Sadly, he seems to have little interest in going to Miami…his dad got to take him on his official tour in March and said that his reaction was “it seems like a really great school, but I don’t know if I can get over the small town in Ohio thing.” Which is 100% fair. 
I’ll hold out hope that they’ll still get to Colorado at least once a year with the new format. 
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Did you tell him about Phan Shin? You haven’t done your job if you failed in this area.
And yet Arizona State has been trying to get into the NCHC for nearly a decade and every other team in the conference is thriving.
Why is this problem exclusive to Miami? No one can ever answer.
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