Campus Ice: North Dakota over Denver, and four more league picks

Preseason polls are coaches being polite to each other. Five leagues have published theirs, and I'm keeping the favorite in three and fading it in two, starting with the national champion in its own conference.

The puck drops Friday. Here are the five races.

NCHC: North Dakota. The 33 media voters put Denver first by two points, 304 to 302, with 14 first-place votes to North Dakota's 12. That's a coin flip dressed up as a ranking, and I'm calling tails.

North Dakota won the Penrose Cup last season in Dane Jackson's first year as head coach. Jan Špunar was the league's top goalie as a freshman. He's on the preseason all-conference team with Cole Reschny and Keaton Verhoeff.

Denver's case is real. Johnny Hicks is 16-0-1 in net with a ring, and seven of the top nine scoring forwards are back. But the champs are breaking in four freshman defensemen, and every NCHC weekend is somebody's biggest game of the year against them. Minnesota Duluth, third with seven first-place votes, makes it a three-team race.

Big Ten: Michigan State. The coaches picked Michigan first, the first time the Wolverines have been the preseason choice since 2015-16. I get it. Michigan led the country with 181 goals and a 31.9 percent power play, and Michael Hage is back after 52 points.

I'm still not moving. The Spartans have won this league's regular season three years running. Michigan has to replace T.J. Hughes, who put up 57 points in 40 games. I picked Michigan State in September, and a vote the other way just makes it more fun to be right.

Hockey East: Providence. Here the coaches and I agree. The Friars got eight of 11 first-place votes after going 18-5-1 in the league for their first outright regular-season title. Jack Parsons is back in net after a .922 save percentage.

The worry is what came after. Providence lost its first game in both the Hockey East and NCAA tournaments. UMass, second in the poll, is the team that makes the Friars pay for a slow start. Behind them, Boston University edged Boston College for third by one point, 87 to 86.

ECAC: Quinnipiac. Ten of 12 first-place votes, 120 points to Dartmouth's 110, and the best player in the league. Ethan Wyttenbach had 59 points as a freshman, and Elliott Groenewold was a plus-39 on the blue line behind him.

Dartmouth is a real second: a program-record 23 wins, an ECAC tournament title and its first NCAA trip since 1980. But the Big Green don't play until Oct. 31. Quinnipiac gets a month's head start.

CCHA: Michigan Tech. The closest vote of the five. The coaches had Tech at 65 points, Bowling Green at 62, Minnesota State at 59 and Augustana at 57. The media gave Minnesota State more first-place votes than Tech, six to four, and still put the Huskies on top.

I'll take the team with the senior goalie. Owen Bartoszkiewicz has 34 career wins, and Bill Muckalt won 23 games last year, a program record for a first-year coach. Four teams inside eight points is a league that gets settled on the last weekend, in a small barn, with the band playing.

Weekend slate: I ranked the opening games last week. Here's how to watch them now, league by league.

Minnesota at Michigan Tech, Friday and Saturday, is the CCHA favorite against the Big Ten's fourth pick. Tech hasn't beaten the Gophers in Houghton since Oct. 19, 2012. Win one and the CCHA pick looks sound by Sunday.

Bowling Green and Michigan trade barns, Yost on Friday and the Slater on Saturday. That's the CCHA coaches' No. 2 against the Big Ten's No. 1, a harder first week than Michigan needed.

UMass at Colorado College is Hockey East's second pick at the NCHC's sixth, two nights at altitude. New Hampshire at Quinnipiac on Friday is Wyttenbach's first shift of the year. And BC at Michigan State doesn't count, which hasn't stopped me from circling it.

NPI watch: There's no NPI table to read until games are played, so October belongs to leagues, not teams. Nonconference results set each conference's strength for the whole winter, because the opponent's quality is baked into every result.

The East needs these weeks most. Its seven teams went 1-7 in last spring's tournament, and the six not named Quinnipiac scored five goals combined. The Frozen Four was Denver, Wisconsin, Michigan and North Dakota. Every UMass night in Colorado and every BU night in Alaska is a deposit or a withdrawal for all of Hockey East.

Prospect watch: Landon DuPont, D, Michigan. He's 17. He had 18 goals and 73 points in 63 games for Everett last season, and he's the second player the WHL ever granted exceptional status, after Connor Bedard. The Big Ten coaches put him on the preseason first team before his first college shift.

Rights: none yet. He's eligible for the 2027 draft and projected to go first. Timeline: one winter at Yost, most likely, and worth every Friday of it.

The first poll with real games in it comes out Monday. The Ice Breaker Tournament follows Oct. 9-10 with UConn, Sacred Heart, Penn State and Bowling Green. By then one of these five picks will already look shaky. My guess is the Big Ten one. I'm keeping it anyway.