The visiting locker room in Cedar Rapids housed 24 tired, dirty, sweaty ISU hockey players and not one of them spoke a word.  The Cyclones found it hard to muster a definition for an emotion that had never experienced.  The Hawkeyes had just beaten the Cyclones 4-3, for the first time in ten years.

This time, the series is at the Ames/ISU Ice arena and the Cyclones are hungry for revenge.

Although the Cyclones had beaten the Hawkeyes by a bigger margin the night before, it was the loss that stuck with them; in particular the Hawkeye goaltender racking up around 50 saves in the contest.

“They had a goalkeeper that got hot,” coach Al Murdoch said. “Also, our players just kind of assumed that somebody would score eventually and win the game, but all of a sudden we ran out of time.  You never make an assumption; you have to play like your the underdog.”

One of the keys Iowa State is going to focus on this series is forechecking and zero checking. Murdoch wants his players to use a two-man forechecking system for the majority of the game against the Hawkeyes.

Forechecking is when one or two defenders pursue the opposing player who has the puck in an effort to get the puck back in the attacking zone while zero checking is a more conservative strategy where a player lets the opponent come at him and uses more of a defensive move to keep him away from the puck or to slow his progress.

“We’re going to use the two-man forecheck in an effort to knock them off the puck,” Murdoch said.  “You have to play hard all the time and be able to adjust the type of checks your sending based on what the situation is.”

Iowa State is coming off a sweep of Saint Louis in which they were able to get the power play rolling on all cylinders, which is something that they haven’t had consistency in for the first half of the regular season, but need to continue to work on burying the puck. They haven’t had as high of goal total as Murdoch would like to see and have called finishing around the net their “Achilles heel” as of late. 

The type of hitting during the game is turned up a notch and the Cyclones will try to focus on sticking to their systems and playing their game as opposed to worrying about what the other team is doing.

Iowa State can’t let outside antics affect what they are doing on the ice because that can get the team away from their game plan.

“We know we can beat them as long as we can play our game,” senior Brian Spring said.  “If we worry about what they’re doing then that means that we aren’t doing our job.  We just got to worry about ourselves and play the way we can play and if we can do that then nobody can beat us.”

There was an incident last year where the Cyclones Derek Behrman was ejected from the game for getting into a fight, which is against the rules in the ACHA and results in the player having to sit out the next game.

Senior Matt Verdoni acknowledges that the rivalry game between the two is always extra intense and all personal relationships go out the window when the two teams take the ice.

“Just the fact that it’s the in-state rivalry with Iowa is something that we all get a little extra energy for,” Verdoni said. “They aren’t in our league so you have to get excited and pumped up to play a non-league game. We don’t have to go on the road at all this year which should give us an advantage because playing them in front of our home crowd here is a pretty un-real feeling.”