 For many years, 5 teams earned automatic bids through winning conference tournament championships, while 11 earned at-large berths through a selection committee.With the addition of the Big Ten Hockey Conference for the 2013–14 season, the tournament now features 6 automatic qualifiers, and 10 at-large bids.The ranking system that is used to determine the at-large teams is known as the Pairwise Rankings, which uses a number of ranking factors to create a scoring system for all NCAA Division I teams.