The Central Collegiate Hockey Association has always been known for being one of the top hockey conferences in the country.

Season after season the CCHA has turned out great talent and great teams as it has produced seven national championship teams, five Hobey Baker Award winners and 141 All-Americans, starting with BGSU’s own Ken Morrow in 1978.

Last season however, the CCHA saw other conferences challenge them as the Eastern College Athletic Conference and Hockey East had great seasons and the CCHA saw only two teams make the 16-team NCAA field. That’s down from the five teams the CCHA had in the tournament the year before.

The Western Collegiate Hockey Association continued its dominance over the country as it fielded five teams in the tournament and became the first conference in college hockey history to have a clean-sweep of the four regions of the tournament bracket. Denver won its second national championship in a row as the Frozen Four belonged to the WCHA with Colorado College, Minnesota and North Dakota joining the Pioneers in Columbus.

The ECAC fielded three teams while Hockey East had four.

This season though, the CCHA has fought itself back into the race as the league has seen plenty of early season success.

As of this past week, the league had five teams in the top 15 of the USA Today/Hockey Magazine poll and six in the top 20 of a poll run by United States College Hockey Online and College Sports Television.

One of these teams is Alaska-Fairbanks, who surprised many people around the country on opening weekend by earning a 4-3 win and a 3-3 tie at top-ranked Minnesota.

That was followed by Nebraska-Omaha winning its Maverick Stampede over nationally ranked New Hampshire and Michigan State winning the Lefty McFadden Tournament in Dayton with a win over national runner-up North Dakota.

Then in pretty evenly matched games at top of the polls, Ohio State earned a win at Colorado College and Michigan won a home match with Boston College the night before BC played the Falcons.

The Buckeyes and Wolverines were favored to be the top teams in the league coming into the season, but they know it’s not going to be an easy road.

“Any one of these teams is one hit away from having a tremendous year,” OSU coach John Markell said at the CCHA Media Day prior to the season. “You better respect your opponent in the CCHA.”

Respect was something Western Michigan was looking for this past weekend as they upset the preseason favored Buckeyes two nights in a row after being picked by many to finish last in the CCHA. The wins gave the Broncos the early CCHA lead as they are tied with Ferris State, Miami and Northern Michigan which all have four league points.

“Not many scores surprise you,” Falcon coach Scott Paluch said. “Western is an extremely tough team at home and they beat a very good Ohio State twice. They came from behind both nights to do it.”

“The league sets itself up to so many parameters,” he continued. “Goaltending, the ability to score a puck and a lot of different things go into it.”

Goaltending was big in the league last year and once again it will be a key this season as the league returns a lot of proven scorers.

Gone are players like Jeff Tambellini, Jim Slater and Jeff Legue, but back are players like OSU’s Tom Fritsche, U of M’s T.J. Hensick, Falcon’s Jonathan Matsumoto, NMU’s Darin Olver, UNO’s Scott Parse and WMU’s Brent Walton.

Though the CCHA and college hockey haven’t adopted the new rules of the National Hockey League that has seen an increase in scoring and excitement, the league has made strides in recent years to better the play.

“With the initiative that Tom Anastos (CCHA Commissioner) has pushed in our league, the hockey is much improved at the college level,” Michigan coach Red Berenson said. “It’s more exciting for the fans and more interesting and more challenging for the players, and I think overall we have a better product than two years ago.”

Once again, the league is shaping up to be a race to the finish as any team is capable of winning the league as no one has stepped up as the dominant team. The CCHA also hopes with all the success and excitement created so far that it can put a good number of teams in the NCAA field again.

“Each and every game is going to be tight – it’#39;s a battle,” MSU coach Rick Comley said. “There used to be a day in college hockey where you could look at the schedule and plot how your season was going to go, those days are long gone right now. I think it’#39;s going to be a great season in the CCHA.”