In addition to scheduling concerns, issues to be discussed include academic profile, location, strength of program and ramifications to the current 12-team, three-weekend playoff structure that ECAC commissioner Phil Buttafuoco said has been “received very well” by the league’s member schools.

Any new teams would need to be approved by a two-thirds vote of a committee of the league’s athletic directors, and a two-thirds vote of the ECAC Policy Committee, comprised of non-athletic representatives at each school who typically have close ties with the university or college president.

Both committees currently have 12 members, but it is possible that Vermont will excuse itself from the membership discussions.

Eight schools would need to approve any new members, both at the athletic director and Policy Committee levels. If Vermont does, in fact, abstain from voting, that means it will take only three dissenting votes—half of the Ivy hockey institutions, in other words—to block a school’s entry.

—Staff writer Jon Paul Morosi can be reached at morosi@fas.harvard.edu.