While they lost leading scorer Brian Rolston to the pros, the Lakers returned their next five point-getters and fielded a team full of players who had made consecutive deep runs in the NCAA tournament.
The Lakers began the season with four wins against conference opponents but when they hosted the class of the CCHA, Michigan, in early November Lake State suffered its first loss of the year.
After a pair of road wins Lake Superior could only manage a home split against Notre Dame who was still recovering from nearly losing their program a decade earlier.
Lake Superior ended the first half of their conference schedule with a loss at Michigan State, dropping to 7–4 and looking like a shadow of the team that had been 20 minutes away from a national championship eight months earlier.
LSSU then battled Minnesota for the tournament title and required double overtime to decide the winner but when the dust settled it was Lake Superior who held the crown.
After recovering with three points against Ohio State the Lakers against suffered a home split then played three overtime games in a week that ended with mediocre results.
Lacher continued his hot streak by shutting out Kent State in consecutive games and after Western Michigan failed to keep pace the Lakers ended the season with a 2nd-place CCHA finish.
The Buckeyes proved they were no match for the Lakers when they failed to score in wither of the two games, allowing Lacher to run his shutout streak almost to 300 minutes, a new program record.
Lake Superior could only muster 15 shots against a ferocious Wolverine defense and the Lakers fell 0–3, ending their three-year reign as CCHA tournament champions.
[4] Their final game came against the top eastern seed, Boston University, and they were expecting to weather a storm from the favored Terriers who had outscored opponents by more than 40 goals in the first period alone that season.
Blaine Lacher finished with a program-record 1.98 goals against average and 6 shutouts on the season (still program bests as of 2019) but his heroics went unrecognized by award voters as only Beddoes made the AHCA West second-team.
Even in their conference the Lakers could only manage two All-CCHA Second Team nods[7] (garnered by Beddoes and Aldridge) but in the end the national championship made up for any slights.