Northern Michigan University’s Griffin Loughran, right, takes on Alaska-Fairbanks’ Chris Jandric at the Berry Events Center in Marquette on Nov. 15, 2019. (Journal file photo)

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — The WCHA seems almost ready to morph into its reincarnation as next season’s CCHA after both Alaska schools have dropped playing men’s hockey this season.

The league will in all likelihood disband after this season, when the league’s seven Midwestern schools leave to re-form the CCHA.

After the WCHA announced on Dec. 11 that Alaska-Fairbanks would join Alaska-Anchorage in not playing the sport this winter, the league will be down to eight schools playing in 2020-21, the same number that will be in the CCHA for 2021-22.

The seven schools bolting the WCHA are Northern Michigan University, Michigan Tech and Lake Superior State from the Upper Peninsula, Ferris State from the Lower Peninsula; Bowling Green State from Ohio; and Minnesota State-Mankato and Bemidji State from Minnesota.

This season’s other remaining WCHA school is Alabama-Huntsville, which isn’t part of the defection. Instead, the new CCHA has invited the University of St. Thomas of St. Paul, Minnesota, to join as that school is transitioning in hockey from NCAA Division III to Division I.

More immediately, however, is a shakeup of this season’s WCHA schedule as the league has dropped from 10 to nine and now eight playing schools. It has left a number of openings in the schedule that the league has helped fill with a number of nonconference series between league schools.

In general, schools that were scheduled to play Alaska schools will now play each other during January and February. They include a mixture of Friday-Saturday and Thursday-Friday series.

The league-game part of the schedule has essentially been left intact as each school will play every other school twice for a total of 14 league games.

NMU will pick up Friday-Saturday games in back-to-back weekends in January, the original weekends the Wildcats were to play Anchorage and Fairbanks. That includes a home series against LSSU on Jan. 8-9 and a road series at Bowling Green on Jan. 15-16.

Northern is involved in the one league game that was earlier postponed, a Dec. 2 game at LSSU. That game has been moved to Saturday, Feb. 6, to make it a Friday-Saturday series in Sault Ste. Marie.

Here are the rest of the rescheduled nonconference series: Friday-Saturday, Jan. 2-3, Bemidji at LSSU; Thursday-Friday, Jan. 21-22, BGSU at Bemidji; Thursday-Friday, Jan. 28-29, Huntsville at Mankato; Friday-Saturday, Feb. 5-6, MTU at Huntsville; Friday-Saturday, Feb. 12-13, Ferris at MTU; and Friday-Saturday, Feb. 19-20, Mankato at Ferris.

The format for the 2020-21 WCHA postseason has yet to be announced, while the league also announced that all games in January and February and the WCHA postseason will stream online at FloHockey.tv.

Alaska-Fairbanks’ decision to drop hockey came in a similar way to Alaska-Anchorage as each school actually suspended most of its winter sports lineup due to financial reasons and coronavirus pandemic concerns.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.