The Notre Dame Fighting Irish officially announced at a press conference today that they would be moving their ice hockey program to Hockey East in time for the 2013-2014 season.
The Irish also announced that they had signed a deal with NBC that would allow them to air a significant portion of their hockey schedule on the network's sister station "Versus" and would include Hockey East opponents as often as possible.
Notre Dame makes the move after being in the CCHA since 1992. They'll be joining college hockey royalty like Boston College, Boston University, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Maine in Hockey East.
The move was necessitated because the CCHA will be disbanding after the 2012-2013 season thanks to the formation of the Big Ten hockey conference. The conference will feature all hockey playing traditional Big Ten members such as Ohio State, Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Penn State. Many of the other CCHA teams have decided to move to the NCHC or WCHA in response.
Hockey East is expected to add one more team for an even 12, but no timetable has been set to make that addition.