The season isn’t going the way the ISU hockey team expected so far, but coach Al Murdoch likes what he sees out of his team.

With the end of the semester quickly approaching, the ISU hockey team is just more than halfway through its season. With two home games against Dakota College-Bottineau coming up, the Cyclones (12-10-1-1) are in fourth place in the Central States Collegiate Hockey League with 34 points.

The Cyclones are one point behind No. 6 Illinois and 12 points behind both No. 4 Ohio and No. 3 Robert Morris (Illinois). They are nine points ahead of No. 24 Indiana and 10 ahead of No. 9 Lindenwood.

Of the 13 teams the Cyclones have played so far this season, eight of them are currently ranked in the ACHA Top 25.

“Our schedule is pretty tough this year,” Murdoch said. “We didn’t really have any soft teams on the schedule.”

Murdoch said he thinks that the Cyclones may have as good of a team as they’ve ever had.

“The biggest difference is the opposing schools are very, very good right now,” Murdoch said.

Last season, a year when the Cyclones graduated one senior and were led in scoring primarily by underclassmen, Jon Feavel put up 40 points (20 goals, 20 assists) in 43 games played. Feavel is on pace to pass that this season, his junior year, with 27 points (16 goals, 11 assists) through 23 games so far this season while leading the team in scoring.

“[Last] year, we had a brand-new team. It was firing right away, but we didn’t have a chance to grow and actually find out about what we are as a team,” Feavel said. “This year, we are being put to the test, where we’re not winning games that shouldn’t, and we’re not losing games that we should’ve won. We’ve been kept honest, I feel like, which is good in the long term.”

Coming into this season, it looked like senior Paul Karus would be the starting goaltender for most of the season, but so far, it looks like it is sophomore Scott Ismond.

So far this season, Ismond has played in 14 games and has a .922 save percentage and 2.66 goals against average. Ismond is also the only ISU goaltender to post a shutout.

Karus, in 10 games played, has a .903 save percentage and a 3.03 goals against average.

Ismond played for the DIII team last season and helped take them to the Final Four, and Murdoch thinks it has paid dividends.

“He had a year to grow, a year to develop, a year to get grades established, all of those things,” Murdoch said. “And, I think that’s been excellent.”