[3] As a college freshman playing for Herb Brooks and the Minnesota Golden Gophers, Broten scored 21 goals, had 50 assists, and was named WCHA Rookie of the Year[1] His final goal of that season was the game winner that clinched the 1979 NCAA Championship in which the Gophers defeated the University of North Dakota by a score of 4–3.

[citation needed] He is the only player to have won the Hobey Baker, the Olympic Gold Medal and the Stanley Cup.

He won a Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils in 1995, scoring the game-winning goal in Game Four against the Detroit Red Wings to clinch the title.

Coincidentally, his 1980 Soviet counterpart Viacheslav Fetisov was on the ice for the heavily favored Red Wings when Broten scored the clincher.

Broten briefly came out of retirement in 1999 to once again play for the US national team in the 1999 Ice Hockey World Championship qualifying tournament (the U.S. team featuring several NHL players had surprisingly finished among the bottom four in the previous 1998 world championship tournament) when no active NHL players were available.

Broten is not featured in the 1981 TV movie about the 1980 U.S. hockey team called Miracle on Ice except in archival footage of the gold medal ceremony.