The Golden Gophers represented the University of Minnesota, played their home games at the Mariucci Arena and were coached by Don Lucia, in his 4th season.

Though the team lost several key players to graduation, including Hobey Baker Award-winner Jordan Leopold, they brought in an impressive collection of young talent.

Perhaps the brightest young star that had ever donned the maroon and gold to that point, Thomas Vanek debuted for the team and Gophers would need the highly-regarded Austrian to make up for the lost offensive production of the departed John Pohl and Jeff Taffe.

[3] Afterwards, Weber remained in the cage and strung several good outings together, including a road sweep of long time rival Wisconsin.

Entering the final few weeks of the season, Minnesota sat 7th in the polls but had a tremendous opportunity to move up with four games against ranked teams.

Because they held the tie-breaker, the Gophers received the second seed for the WCHA tournament and got to take on a bad but improving Michigan Tech squad.

The Gophers won the first game fairly easily and appeared to be heading to a sweep in the second when Weber suffered an injury to his finger.

The Tigers fought back with two power play goals in the second half of the game along with 38 shots but Johnson held the fort and enabled the Gophers to skate away with a 4–2 win.

With the return of Weber between the pipes and Potulny netting a hat-trick, Minnesota proved those sentiments correct with a resounding 9–2 victory.

The Bulldogs were led by Hobey Baker finalist Chris Kunitz and gave the Gophers a demonstration of his abilities when he scored twice in the first period.

Troy Riddle cut the lead in half on a rebound from Vanek before the end of the second while a marker less than two minutes into the third from Gino Guyer tied the score.

Minnesota carried the balance of play but Mike Ayers put up a strong performance in goal for the Wildcats and kept his team in the game.