FAIRBANKS, Alaska — A lot has changed not just in college hockey, but in college athletics since Erik Largen took over as head coach of the University of Alaska Fairbanks men’s hockey program in 2018.

Name, Image and Likeness (NIL), the rise of the transfer portal, the House Settlement and the lifting of the major junior ban top the list of changes for many schools, but not Alaska.

The biggest shift of the landscape to shake the Nanooks in the last 10 years was the end of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association in 2021 after seven members left to restart the CCHA minus Alaska, Alaska Anchorage and Alabama Huntsville.

Huntsville folded its program, while Anchorage and Fairbanks became independents for the first time since the early 1990s.

Largen — a Fairbanks native who played

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