They sent an ACHA all star team historically.
I’ve never seen ACHA or Div3 in person, so I’ve got to ask how big the talent difference is , I’ve seen a lot of articles pumping the ACHA’s tires , but they all seem to be very biased .
There are some good players in the ACHA, and some are capable of playing real college hockey and, for whatever reason, don't. Some of them have the talent but not the work ethic, and some the reverse, and most have neither the talent nor the work ethic. Most club teams practice significantly less than NCAA Division I and Division III programs, don't have on campus rinks or facilities, lack the coaching talent, and have wide talent gaps from the first line to the fourth line and so on. They're also, by and large, pay-to-play programs that are generally unsupervised by the school. They're almost always not run by the athletic department, and a good amount of shady shit happens - just look at what happened with Iowa State this past year. But all that doesn't stop the "Division I Club" teams from woofing about how "they could play in the NCAA." Even Lindenwood, which was a club team last year, brought in 15 new players and transfers for their first NCAA Division I season because the club players are just not at that level.
The reality is that even NCAA Division III hockey nowadays is a commitment that demands 100% and nothing less from student athletes, and generally, most Division III players now have at least a year, if not more, of Tier II juniors. They're 20 years old coming in as freshmen, just like in Division I. The demands on their time for practice and off-ice training and treatments and so on are no different, and often couple with far more demanding academic workloads than at a lot of Division I schools.
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