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The coaches and media released their preseason polls for the CCHA today, and they were split on the league's top team. Michigan led the way in the media poll, gaining 50 of the 87 first place votes, while seven of the league's coaches selected Notre Dame for the top spot, undeterred by Notre Dame's 8th place finish last season.
Here are the full poll results:
| Coaches Poll | Media Poll | |||||||
| 1. | Notre Dame (7) | 105 | 1. | Michigan (50) | 903 | |||
| 2. | Michigan (2) | 100 | 2. | Western Michigan (25) | 825 | |||
| 3. | Western Michigan (2) | 97 | 3. | Notre Dame (9) | 765 | |||
| 4. | Miami | 78 | 4. | Ferris State (3) | 626 | |||
| 5. | Ferris State | 67 | 5. | Miami | 622 | |||
| 6. | Ohio State | 66 | 6. | Michigan State | 528 | |||
| 7. | Michigan State | 56 | 7. | Ohio State | 438 | |||
| 8. | Bowling Green | 43 | 8. | Northern Michigan | 389 | |||
| 9. | Northern Michigan | 43 | 9. | Bowling Green | 264 | |||
| 10. | Alaska | 31 | 10. | Lake Superior | 232 | |||
| 11. | Lake Superior | 29 | 11. | Alaska | 150 | |||
As you can see, the media poll seems a little more slanted towards last year's results, especially with Ferris State picking up first place votes, despite how much they lost due to graduation.
One of the bigger surprises is how much faith both the coaches and the media have in Bowling Green, since you have to travel back to 2007-2008 to find a Falcon team that finished that high in the standings.
All in all, this looks to be exciting and competitive season in the final year of the CCHA. Despite how these votes shook out, I'm not entirely confident in teams like Michigan and Miami maintaining their recent success after all they've lost, while projected midpack teams like Ohio State and Michigan State seem to be on the upswing, which should help make this a really wide open race.