Minds could, might and will change.

Michigan picked a good year to start classes before Labor Day for the 1st time in decades.

When is the start date - Wed the 1st?

The thing to consider with Noah West is that he’s coming from the worst conference in college hockey. So the numbers may be padded a bit from playing against less talented opposition. 
 

It’ll be an interesting battle for backup between him and Jack Leavy (senior that hasn’t played yet) that id expect West to win. But replicating his .915 in the very talented B1G seems unlikely. If he can hover around a .900, that should be good enough to give Portillo a night off every so often. But I’d expect Portillo to be the workhorse all year.

Not really. It’s been well noted the history made by this draft. 
 

No school has ever had 3 players taken in the first round of the same draft. Michigan not only became the first to ever do that, they did so in the first 4 picks of the draft. And then added another with the 5th pick. And another later in the first round. So no team had ever had more than 2, and Michigan pulled off 5. 
 

Joining a roster that already has two other 1st round picks (bringing the total to 7) and a 2nd round pick in Bordeleau. You’re looking at almost half of the lineup being drafted in the 1st or 2nd round of the draft. Another 3 players who were drafted in other rounds and another incoming freshman that was a 4th round pick. 
 

6 first round picks on a single roster is unheard of. Hell, they have entire NCAA tournaments where they don’t hit double digit first round picks participating. On a GOOD year you might see a powerhouse with 3 or 4. 

There are different ways to break this down. 

One of the issues here is that the paradigm of college hockey is different now than it used to be. It was not always a significant source of NHL prospects, and so draft counts were much lower. Michigan's 1996-1997 team, the last team that merited the kind of hype this team merits from Michigan fans (after all, they were the defending champions and had most of the team back; that's a good warning for us today, btw) was loaded with guys like Turco, Morrison, Botterill, and Madden. But, uh, Botterill was a 20th overall pick, Morrison was a second rounder, Turco was a fifth, Madden was undrafted. 

In 1993 Maine torched the college hockey world with Paul Kariya, winning the national title and losing, I recall, only one game (Michigan took them to overtime in the Frozen Four that year). Kariya dominated the sport, scoring 100 points in 39 games and winning the Hobey Baker his freshman year. 

Kariya was a 4th overall pick.

So there could be teams 30, 40, 50 years ago that could be much more talented relative to other teams in college hockey than this team... that do not have nearly the same quantity of high draft picks. 

From a pure, objective draft standard, I would guess that this is the most talented collection of drafted players college hockey has seen. That does not guarantee results either on ice together or in the NHL. 

But it should be fun.

Was there when Michigan played in Boston against BU on October 25, 2014. The night did not end well for the Wolverines.