Earlier this week Karen Ambrose posed this question and advanced 1977-79
as the golden years.  As a "College Hockey Dark Ager" will accept her
biases and add that I have my own Denver bias.  I would argue a decade
earlier as The Golden Age.  DU had back-to-back NC$$ and WCHA titles in
those years.  The 1968 team ran off a string of 22 consecutive victories
to win the championship.  Then in 1969 they tied the Czech National team
at Broadmoor World Tournament.  That Czech Team went on to win the World
Championship later in the season.
 
This is not all DU glory.  The level of competition in the top programs
was very high.  The NHL was still very small and so there was a log-jam of
talent available.  Players like Red Berenson started to make the
breakthrough from the college level to the pros.  Ken Dryden was at
Cornell during this time, and if I'm not mistaken, Tony Esposito came to
the Blackhawks from Michigan Tech in 1969.  DU's goaltender (Gerry Powers)
of the time recorded 13 career shutouts and still didn't have NHL career.
 
Those DU teams produced a half dozen NHL players.  I'm sure the other top
college programs had similar success stories that I don't remember.  But
Cliff Koroll, Keith Magnuson and Craig Patrick had substantial NHL
careers.  Craig Patrick's career is a hockey trivia question in itself.  He
has NC$$ championship (player), an Olympic Gold Medal (assistant coach
1980) and the Stanley Cup (General Manager - Pittsburgh).  Intuitively,
it seems appropriate to use the NHL as the benchmark for all of hockey in
the 1960s.  Today the games have diverged and I tend to prefer the
college game.  Thus, intertemporal comparisons have become even more
speculative.  But, we saw some great close-checking hockey in those days.
 
Those are the reflections of a western hockey "dark ager".