Friday evening was an historic one for Penn State hockey despite not playing. With Ohio State's 3-2 loss to Wisconsin and Minnesota losing to Michigan in a shootout, the Nittany Lion ice hockey team clinched at least a share of the Big Ten regular season championship title. Notre Dame had an opportunity to grab a share of the conference title as well, but the Fighting Irish fell to Michigan State at home in South Bend in a 3-1 loss.

With a three-point lead over Minnsota in the standings, the Nittany Lions will have to see tonight how Minnesota performs in order to determine if they will share the regular season conference title or claim it outright.

This marks Penn State's first regular season ice hockey championship for the program, which also has a conference tournament title that it won back in 2017. The Lions' first place finish this season follows a fourth place standing in each of the previous three seasons. Aside from the conference championship hardware, Penn State has also earned a first-round bye in the upcoming Big Ten Tournament, as the Lions will initiate conference tournament play in the semifinal round. The Lions will enter the Big Ten Tournament as the No. 1 seed and will face the lowest remaining seeded team on March 14 or 15 at home in Pegula Ice Arena.

In terms of the NCAA Tournament, the Pairwise probability matrix for the postseason currently has Penn State as one of seven teams at 100 percent to make the NCAA Tournament, along with North Dakota, Minnesota State, Cornell, Boston College, Minnesota-Duluth and Denver. The Big Ten team with next highest probability to make the NCAA Tournament is Ohio State which stands currently at 75 percent. Minnesota is the third-highest standing Big Ten squad and is currently at 40 percent.