Coach Al Murdoch yelled, cursed and intimidated Cyclone players during their most recent practice.

All were ways of showing that he isn’t one to be taken lightly. If the Cyclones want to avoid a loss this weekend, they can’t take St. Louis lightly either.

The Billikins bring in an 8–5 record in their league, along with coach Tim Ebben, who played with five NHL teams, and leading goal-scorer Phil Blackwood. The Cyclones are looking to put some of the valuable lessons they learned against Manitoba last weekend against SLU.

“They’re pretty quick,” Murdoch said. They’re fearless, they hit, and they never give up. They’re a sound team. We’re just going to keep coming at them, play four lines both days.

The Cyclones have had stretches of seasons in the past when the team plays down to its competition and then ends up overlooking an opponent.

The Cyclones will use their speed and athleticism to try to wear the Billikins down late into the game and jump on rebounds to put more pucks in the net. 

The Bison did exploit Iowa State’s weaknesses and made them realize they aren’t as good as they once thought they were up to that point in the season.

One of the main lessons the Cyclones learned from the quicker, more athletic Canadian foe was the level of effort they need to come out of the locker room with and play with for the duration of the game.

“It was a huge wake-up call,” said junior forward Mitch Paulsen. “They have very good systems, and they move the puck really well and know how to put it in the net. The main thing we learned is to keep your feet moving and make hard passes. They pass the puck so much harder and make the ice so much bigger, and it obviously led to a lot of goals on their part, so that is something were going to look to do against St. Louis.”

The main problem Iowa State is running into with their defensive zone play is knowing who is supposed to be doing what job at a certain time. The Cyclones want to avoid getting run down in their defensive zone coverage.

“We still need to work on consistency, defensive zone coverage,” Murdoch said. “We need to work on hitting. We tended to chase Manitoba a little more, and now that I’ve had the chance to look at the tape, we were chasing the puck a lot when we should have been playing the body.”

The consistency the Cyclones are lacking is in the form of playing the full shift. 

Murdoch likes to get a solid 30 – 45 second shift out of his players and noticed that most of their mistakes came at the end of their shifts and when they had been out on the ice too long.

If the Cyclones can get back to playing their style of hockey, they should be able to keep the Billikins at bay.

“We think that we’re a better team than St. Louis,” said sophomore forward Brian Rooney. “We really just need to take it like any other big game, like Manitoba or Illinois or whoever: come out and get the win and don’t mess around with them.”