Sure, the No. 2-ranked Michigan Wolverines are coming to town in two weeks, but those dishes aren\u2019t going to wash themselves.<\/p>\n
There can\u2019t be many apartments in North America that currently houses three of the first 64 players selected in the 2026 NHL draft, but one of them is not far from Magness Arena. Daxon Rudolph, Ryan Lin and Ben MacBeath were all selected in the first two rounds in June.<\/p>\n
They all look like future NHL players. In the present, they are three of the four freshmen who are going to revamp the University of Denver\u2019s defense corps this season. The Pioneers, defending national champions and winners of three titles in the past five years<\/a>, open the 2026-27 season Friday night at the University of Alaska-Anchorage.<\/p>\n The past few weeks have been a crash course on NCAA hockey, and living on their own.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s pretty awesome. I grew up playing with Dax a lot, and he lives at my house in the summer so we\u2019re pretty close friends,\u201d MacBeath said. \u201cIt\u2019s been more about getting to know Ryan more. It\u2019s a lot of fun. They\u2019re great players. There\u2019s tons for me to learn from them. It\u2019s been a great experience.<\/p>\n \u201cRight now, we\u2019re just doing everything. We\u2019ve got a three-man job cooking the meals, doing the dishes all together. It\u2019s probably not the best systematic thing, but that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n The Pios have several key players to replace this season, and entire right side of a defense corps to reconstruct. Eric Pohlkamp, a Hobey Baker Award finalist, Boston Buckberger and Garrett Brown all signed NHL contracts and left school early, while senior captain Kent Anderson also joined them in the pros.<\/p>\n How DU and coach David Carle are going to replace them is a window into a new era of Pios hockey<\/a> \u2026 but with the same championship or bust expectations. Brown was the No. 99 pick in his NHL draft class. Pohlkamp was No. 132, but also transferred in from Bemidji State for two very successful and productive years with the Pios. Anderson and Buckberger were never drafted.<\/p>\n The quartet expected to replace them are all high draft picks and big-time NHL prospects.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve had young d-corps in the past and done just fine,\u201d Carle said. \u201cOne thing we\u2019ve heard from our older guys is there\u2019s no ego with this freshmen class. I think perceptually they maybe thought there could be. That might be because of some of the teams we\u2019ve played that this many picks and first rounders, but our leaders have been really happy to see they\u2019re normal dudes just like them. A lot of that credit goes to (general manager\/assistant coach) Tavis (MacMillan). He\u2019s finding the right people that will fit within the program really well.\u201d<\/p>\n Rudolph was the fourth selection in the 2026 draft by the Buffalo Sabres. Lin went at No. 21 to the San Jose Sharks. They are the first pair of first-round picks to be on the DU roster at the same time in program history, let alone be part of an incoming freshmen class together.<\/p>\n Both are right-handed shots, so they may not see a lot of time on the ice together. They will be competing with each other, and there\u2019s no guarantee they\u2019ll instantly get all of the plum assignments. Six of the top seven defensemen on this team are NHL draft picks, and the seventh is senior assistant captain Cale Ashcroft.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing able to play alongside (Lin) and that friendly competition is only going to make us better,\u201d Rudolph said. \u201cI think it really excites both of us. We\u2019re not like scared of each other or anything like that. We\u2019re really happy to play with each other and learn from each other and compete for those roles.\u201d<\/p>\n MacBeath was the No. 64 pick in the draft by the New York Rangers. He and Rudolph grew up a little less than two hours apart in Alberta, but they\u2019ve played on youth teams together for years. The most famous one was Alberta\u2019s entry in the Brick Invitational, the premier hockey tournament for 9-year-olds in the world.<\/p>\n Zac Olsen, a highly-touted freshman at Colorado College and third-round pick by the Toronto Maple Leafs, was also on that Brick squad.<\/p>\n \u201cThe practices were in Edmonton and I lived in Calgary,\u201d MacBeath said. \u201cHe lived like halfway between, so my parents would drop me off and they would take me the rest of the way. We became really close, and we\u2019ve spent a lot of time together for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n Blake Fiddler, who was the No. 36 pick in the 2025 draft by the Seattle Kraken, is the fourth member of what is easily the most highly-ranked group of defensemen in a recruiting class in program history. Zeev Buium became a first-round pick after his freshman season at DU, but the Pios have never had four top-two round picks in one class at the position.<\/p>\n Carle\u2019s program has become a defenseman factory. His brother, Matt Carle, and Will Butcher both won the Hobey Baker Award this century as defensemen, but guys like Buium, Pohlkamp and Avalanche prospect Sean Behrens have all blossomed in recent years with the Pios.<\/p>\n