With two wins against the Huntsville Havoc under their belt, the ISU hockey club hits the road for three games this weekend in North Dakota.

Iowa State (2-0-0) will be playing a pair of games against North Dakota State on Friday and Sunday and one game against Minot State on Saturday.

Last season, the Cyclones didn’t play against North Dakota State, an independent ACHA team. Josh Hinz led the Bison in scoring last season with 39 points (24 goals, 15 assists).

Hinz trailed ISU forward J.P. Kascsak by five points. Kascsak had 44 points (25 goals, 19 assists).

The Bison also lack experience at the goaltender position. Last season, Trevor Tabaka, the Bison’s senior goaltender gave up 4.18 goals per game and posted a 0.89 save percentage. Their other two goaltenders only played in six and four games last season.

ISU coach Al Murdoch said a player like Kascsak will take advantage of this lack of experience, “naturally,” but Kascsak said he isn’t taking something like that for granted.

“We’re going to continue what we’ve been working on in practice,” Kascsak said. “It’s going to pay off.”

Kascsak spoke with confidence about this weekend’s games against North Dakota State.

“We know we’re better than them, so we’re not even going to give them a sniff, not a chance,” Kascsak said.

Last season, Iowa State played a pair of games against Minot State in Ames and won both contests with scores of 4-1 and 4-3. This year the Cyclones travel to play them in Minot, N.D.

Senior captain Brandon Clark isn’t sure what it will be like to play Minot State on the road.

“We’ve never played there. They come here, I want to say almost every year,” Clark said. “They always have a pretty big team, and they always are good. They always show up to play.”

Minot State has had one more week of practice than the Cyclones have so far this season, but Murdoch isn’t worried about it. With 20 returning players who already know the “Cyclone Hockey system,” he thinks they’ll be able to make up for the lack of experience from the freshman.

Iowa State plays against North Dakota State at 8:45 p.m. in Fargo, N.D. They play Minot State on Saturday at 5 p.m. in Minot, N.D., and then travel back to Fargo for a 3:15 p.m. game against North Dakota State on Sunday.