WCHA Media, Coaches Polls Released

You have to love technology. The WCHA Coaches and Media pre-season ballots were scheduled to be released on Wednesday. Both polls were released mere minutes after mid-night. When you're craving college hockey news, you have to love stuff like this.

Little bit about the polls, for the coaches ballot, each head coach sends in a ranking of teams 1-11 not voting on their own squad. They also pick a Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year (can come from their own team). The media do the same. This season there were 29 media members that voted (come on Ciskie, next year let me vote and make it to 30 even voters, I promise I can make a better ROY pick than Radoslav Illo or Rob Gunderson).

The heavy WCHA favorite this season is North Dakota (with good reason). They were picked by both the media and the coaches to win the league. They lose practically nothing, add a solid recruiting class, and get Chay Genoway back for a fifth season of eligibility. I too had UND at #1, you can find my ballot here. The Media voted Wisconsin to finish 5th in the league and the coaches have the Badgers finishing 7th.

The clear cut rookie of the year was Jaden Schwartz from Colorado College. Again both the coaches and media agreed on Schwartz as the favorite. I also had Jaden as my winner. Badger forward Tyler Barnes (Waterloo, USHL) received one vote in both the coaches and media polls.

The biggest discrepency seems to be on the pre-season Player of the Year. More than a third of the media members who voted picked North Dakota defenseman Chay Genoway to win the award more than doubling runner up Garrett Roe from St. Cloud. The coaches winner was Jack Connolly from UMD, who finished fourth in the media voting, and second on his own team behind talented forward Justin Fontaine. Genoway was the runner up in the coaches voting.

LINK to the 40th annual Grand Forks Herald Preseason Coaches Poll
LINK to the 94X WCHA Preseason Media Poll

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