After a successful series at Illinois, the Cyclone hockey team returns home to faceoff with Eastern Michigan this weekend at the Ames/ISU Ice Arena.

Iowa State played two games with No. 4 ranked Illinois and came away with a win and a loss in a shootout.

Despite coming out short in the shootout, the Cyclones still considered the weekend a success.

“I think we played well both Friday and Saturday, so I think we’ll have a lot of momentum going into this weekend,” said sophomore defenseman Brody Toigo. “As long as we keep our momentum going, we should be alright.”

Eastern Michigan comes into the weekend with a 7-21-1 record and a record of 2-12 in the Central State League.

The only two wins the Eagles have picked up in the league were against Western Michigan early in the season.

Even though the Eagles do not compare to teams like Illinois or Lindenwood, Iowa State will not take them lightly.

Over the course of the season, the Cyclones have lost a few games to lesser opponents. For this series of games Iowa State wants to get the sweep and move on.

“Not to take anything away from Eastern Michigan, but they aren’t the caliber of us or Illinois,” said junior defenseman Brady Irwin. “So we just want to get everyone a chance to play, keep everyone healthy and pick up the sweep.”

If the Eagles come to Ames hoping to get an upset or two, they will have to win in an arena that is very tough to play in. Iowa State only has two losses at home this season, one to Illinois and one in a shootout to Central Oklahoma.

On a game night, the Ames/ISU Ice Arena is loud and all of the home players feed off of that energy.

“Because we are home and we play well at home, I think anything less than a sweep would be a disappointment,” Toigo said.

While playing at home, the Cyclone defense is holding opposing teams to an average of 1.7 goals per game while scoring an average of 6.45 goals per game. In addition to holding the opponents to low scoring, the Cyclones are holding opponents to less than 25 shots per game in all games.

With six games to play until the Central States Collegiate Hockey League tournament, the Cyclones could use all the points they can get and sweeping these weekend means eight points towards tournament seeding, it makes it that much more important.

“We still have room for improvement in a lot of areas and I don’t expect to peak until the championship game in the national tournament,” said coach Al Murdoch.

One of the areas Murdoch would like to improve is the Cyclones’ play in games that go into overtime. Iowa State is just 1–4 in overtime this season and its four losses have all come via shootouts. Murdoch is emphasizing playing well in four on four situations and finishing in shootouts.

“We still have a long way to go,” Irwin said. “We made a lot of strides last weekend and we just want to build on that.”