The maturation of sophomores Scott Beattie and Jim Hiller would provide a scoring punch that led the nation but, most importantly, starting goaltender Bill Pye recovered from a poor 1989–90 season.

Their winning streak ended when they hit the road to play Minnesota; without the advantage of the Lakeview Arena crowd NMU took only 1 point over the weekend and allowed the Gophers to take the top spot in the WCHA standings.

Cloud with a pair of home wins, then headed to Colorado to face Denver where the porous defense gave Northern Michigan their biggest scoring weekend of the season with 20 goals in two games.

The two teams headed for a clash of the WCHA titans in Marquette with the Gophers up by a point while Northern Michigan had two games in hand, a reversal of situation back in December.

The teams fought to a 3–3 tie in the first game but the Wildcats offense broke through in the second match, giving NMU a much needed win and the lead in the WCHA standings.

[5] Despite being guaranteed a first round bye, the Wildcats weren't distracted by their good fortune and held the Gophers back, winning the close affair 4–2 with an empty net goal to seal the match.

The top eastern team had easily dispatched Minnesota in their quarterfinal and were looking for a repeat performance from December but this time the Wildcats were ready for the stifling Black Bear defense.

In what head coach Rick Comley would later call their best period of the season, Northern Michigan scored five unanswered goals in middle frame to take a 5–3 lead after 40 minutes.

BU finally responded with a goal from a falling Dave Thomlinson but Darryl Plandowski's second of the night gave NMU back their three-goal lead.

Disaster nearly struck the Wildcats when Kevin O'Sullivan got free in the left circle and fired a shot that eluded Bill Pye's right pad and hit the post behind him.

Not to be outdone, off of the ensuing faceoff, Northern Michigan's Tony Szabo hit the crossbar with a slapshot leaving both teams feeling fortunate for the close misses.

In took a third overtime before a team would break the tie and just under two minutes in Mark Beaufait grabbed the puck after a drop pass from Plandowski and skated towards the left circle.

BU's goaltender, Scott Cashman, had over played Beaufait and left the net essentially vacated so when Plandowski shot the puck there was no one there to stop it and NMU's eighth goal of the night ended one of craziest games in NCAA history.

Rick Comley's team posted a program record 38 wins, tied for the 3rd-highest total ever (as of 2019) and received the Spencer Penrose Award as the national coach of the year.

[9] Brad Werenka set a program record for goals, assists and points in a season by a defenseman (20, 43 and 63 respectively) and was named to the All-American West First Team along with Beattie.