It has been four long years for most of the seniors on the Iowa State hockey team, but this weekend will be the last time any of them skate onto the ice for a game in the Ames/ISU Ice Arena.

Seven ISU players will take to the ice one final time in hope of leaving Ames with a couple of wins. The Cyclones will face off win the UNI Panthers in what will be a final tune-up for the national tournament next week.

The game will be the last in Ames for Captain Bent Cornelius, Pete Majkozak, Brad Krueger, Matt Verdoni, Brian Spring, Derek Behrman and junior Brady Irwin, who will graduate one year early.

“I’ve been real proud of the seniors,” said coach Al Murdoch. “Their hard work, their dedication, their loyalty, plus they’re darn good students and darn good hockey players.”

With this weekend being the final series in the regular season for the Cyclones, the team would like to end it on a good note. Murdoch plans on getting everyone some good ice time in a game situation in order to get a rhythm and keep it going into the tournament.

Murdoch compared the Panthers, whom the Cyclones haven’t played in a couple of years, to teams like Kansas, Missouri and Iowa — all of which the Cyclones handled easily earlier on in the season.

Last weekend, penalties and turnovers killed the Cyclones in the semifinal round of the Central States Collegiate Hockey Leage Tournament in Ames. Murdoch plans on using this series to get back on track and focus on fewer penalties, better focus and discipline, breaking the puck out of the zone and controlling the pace of the game.

“We’re just going to try and get everything synced, so hopefully we will have all the lines going,” Cornelius said. “I’ll be looking for scoring from all the line just to kind of get back into the flow of everything.”

Friday night will be senior night and a big turnout is expected as usual.

“This is kind of my last hoorah here in Ames,” Majkozak said. “It’s just kind of crazy how fast the time went and the relationships you’ve made.”

This group of seniors has been involved in some of the highlights hockey during the last four years. They were a part of the 2007 team who won the CSCHL Tournament; each season they have been here, the Cyclones have not lost more than 11 games during a single season (excluding overtime loses) and each season the team has finished the year in the top 20 in rankings.

With one series to go in Ames, winning is on the mind of each senior.

“It would mean a lot for us to win these last two,” Cornelius said. “We want to go out on a good note.”

Despite all of the emotions that go into this last weekend, the team would love to stay focused on preparing to make a run at the championship.

“It’s special, but we have to keep moving and keep our eyes on the prize for next weekend,” Cornelius said.