On Friday night the Cyclones began the Central States Collegiate Hockey League tournament exactly as they’d hoped for. Iowa State beat its first opponent, Kent State, 5-0 and will move on to play Ohio in the semifinals on Saturday.

Iowa State controlled the tempo throughout the game by holding the Golden Flashes to 23 total shots. Iowa State Junior goalie Erik Hudson recorded his sixth shutout of the season. There were a couple times in the game where Kent State broke away from Iowa State defenders to go one-on-one with Hudson, but Hudson turned them all away.

“It’s just like any other one, just have to keep plugging away,” Hudson said. “The team played well, so I have to give them a lot of credit.”

Iowa State struck first late in the first period on a Jordan Pascale goal and Mike Lebler scored shortly after and from that point on, the Cyclones never looked back. They added three more goals in the third with the last one coming on an empty net goal by Cort Bulloch.

Earlier in the season when Iowa State traveled to Kent State, penalties were a big problem and led to the Cyclones getting swept, however, this was not the case on Friday. The Cyclones were only penalized a couple of times and both came early in the second period. The two penalties occurred close to the same time and it forced Iowa Sate to kill of a 5-3 power play for Kent State.

“When we played these guys earlier in the season, they beat us on power play goals,” said coach Al Murdoch. “Tonight we shut that down and didn’t take a penalty all third period and that’s the style of play you have to play when it comes to playoffs.”

Iowa State had 63 total shots on net in the game with five different players scoring. The combination of the two forced Kent State goalie Ryan Gregory, who shut down Iowa State earlier in the season, to really work in net. Gregory saved 58 of 62 shots on goal.

Moving on to the semifinals along with Iowa State are Lindenwood, Illinois and Ohio. Lindenwood will play Illinois in the early game on Saturday, while the Cyclones will play the first seed in the tournament Ohio. The game will start at 7:30 p.m. at the Ames/ISU Ice Arena.