The University of Maine’s hockey team will be playing in the 2028 Friendship Four tournament in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
UMaine will be joined in the 2028 field of the annual tournament by the University of Notre Dame, Nebraska Omaha and Dartmouth College — representing four different conferences.
Notre Dame is in the Big Ten Conference, Dartmouth College is from the Eastern College Athletic Conference and Nebraska Omaha is in the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.
This will be the second time UMaine has played in the Friendship Four, which is held at the SSE Arena, the home of the Belfast Giants.
The Giants play in the United Kingdom’s Elite Ice Hockey League.
The tournament is held during Thanksgiving weekend.
During the 2017-18 Friendship Four, the Black Bears lost to Providence College 3-0 in their first round game before beating Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 4-2 in the third place game.
Clarkson beat Providence, 4-2, in the championship game to earn the Belpot Trophy.
UMaine head coach Ben Barr participated in the tournament when he was an assistant at the University of Massachusetts and said it was “awesome” to be part of it.
“It was a great experience. They do a great job,” Barr said about the hosts.
The tournament began in 2015 and is the first and only NCAA Division I hockey tournament that is played outside of North America.
This year’s tournament involves the Rochester Institute of Technology and Sacred Heart from Atlantic Hockey America, Miami-Ohio (NCHC) and Union College (ECAC).
The 2026 tournament will involve Hockey East teams Providence and the University of Connecticut along with Minnesota Duluth (NCHC) and Colgate (ECAC).
The 2027 tourney field will include Northeastern (Hockey East), Quinnipiac (ECAC), North Dakota (NCHC) and Wisconsin (Big Ten).