The ECAC Holiday Hockey Festival was an annual NCAA men's Division I ice hockey tournament held annually at Madison Square Garden in New York City around the Christmas and New Year holiday. The tournament began in the year the ECAC was founded and continued for fifteen years before dissolving after the 1976–77 season.
The tournament was the first mid-season event sponsored by ECAC Hockey and initially only invited four members of the conference to participate. As the competition grew and became more prestigious it was expanded to 6 teams for the 1964 iteration and, two years later, invited the first non-conference member to participate (Minnesota). The championship returned to a 4-team tournament in 1967. For the first 12 years the tournament was held before Christmas but began to wane in interest and was not held in 1973. After a year hiatus it returned, this time being played after the New Year. The change to January didn't seem to help matters and the Festival was permanently discontinued three years later.
Yearly results Year Champion Runner-up Third place Fourth place 1977 Boston University Colgate St. Lawrence Bowdoin 1976 Clarkson Vermont Cornell Pennsylvania 1975 Cornell St. Lawrence Brown Boston College 1972 St. Louis Notre Dame Clarkson St. Lawrence 1971 Notre Dame St. Lawrence Boston College Brown 1970 Harvard Clarkson Yale Bowdoin 1969 Cornell St. Lawrence Boston College Rensselaer 1968 Clarkson Yale BrownDartmouth None 1967 Cornell Brown St. Lawrence Clarkson Year Champion Runner-up Third place Fourth place Fifth place Sixth place 1966 Boston University Clarkson Minnesota St. Lawrence Yale Princeton 1965 Cornell St. Lawrence ColgateNortheastern None YaleBoston College None 1964 Northeastern Brown Clarkson Providence Cornell St. Lawrence Year Champion Runner-up Third place Fourth place 1963 Clarkson Boston College Brown Army 1962 Boston College Clarkson St. Lawrence Cornell 1961 Clarkson St. Lawrence Boston CollegeBoston University None Note: * denotes overtime
Team records Team # of times participated Titles Clarkson 10 4 Cornell 7 4 Boston University 3 2 Boston College 7 1 Northeastern 2 1 Notre Dame 2 1 Harvard 1 1 St. Louis 1 1 St. Lawrence 11 0 Brown 6 0 Yale 4 0 Bowdoin 2 0 Colgate 2 0 Army 1 0 Dartmouth 1 0 Minnesota 1 0 Princeton 1 0 Providence 1 0 Rensselaer 1 0 Vermont 1 0
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