The defending National Champion Eagles men’s hockey team picks up where they left off in the preseason USA Today / USA Hockey Magazine Men’s College Hockey Poll – at number one. Boston College received all but 6 first place votes (28 of the 34 first place votes, 504 total points). North Dakota places second while Miami finishes third. Michigan and Yale round out the top five.
From Hockey East, Maine enters the season ranked seventh (281 points) even though the Black Bears didn’t make the final 2009-10 poll. New Hampshire is right behind the Black Bears at #8 (206 points), having finished 2009-10 at #11, while BU squeaks into the top 15 at #14 (69 points). Three other Hockey East teams -- Vermont (28), Northeastern (14) and Merrimack (2) -- ended up in the "Others receiving votes" category.
Fetch over at The College Hockey Blog takes exception to the high preseason rank of the Denver, noting that while Denver did finish the year at #4 in the final poll, the Pioneers have lost key pieces of a team that entered the NCAA Tournament as the top overall seed:
"Denver being ranked is also a headscratcher to me. The Pioneers have some good recruits, but they lost nearly everybody important off last year’s team, most notably Marc Cheverie and Patrick Wiercioch."
Replace "Denver" with "Boston University" and "Marc Cheverie and Patrick Weircioch" with "Nick Bonino, Vinny Saponari and Colby Cohen" and that’s how I feel about the Terriers being ranked at #14. A head-scratcher.
BC travels to Denver to take on the Pioneers on October 15-16.
Click here to see the complete poll.
The brashly-named Boston Hockey Blog continues its preseason ranking previews, predictably going with New Hampshire at #3 and Maine at #2. That leaves one season preview left – us, which should drop later today.