The depth of Iowa State will be put to the test this coming weekend when they face off against Stony Brook University.

Not only will the Cyclones have their hands full trying to contain a Stony Brook team that is averaging around five goals per game, but Iowa State will also be playing without junior forward Pete Majkozak or co-captains Brent Cornelius and Adam Mueller, who will be participating in the World University Games in China.

Despite the players being gone, coach Al Murdoch, who will also be traveling to China, has full confidence that the team’s depth will be able to make up for the three players.

“We’ve known all along about the University Games since tryouts in August,” Murdoch said. “So we built a team 28 players deep and now this will be an opportunity for some additional guys to play, and it’s time for them to step it up and score some goals and prevent the other team from scoring.”

In addition to the three players leaving, the Cyclones may also be without the services of freshman defenseman Brody Toigo, who hurt his shoulder last weekend. Murdoch has been holding him out practice this past week and is listing him as questionable for this weekend.

“He tweaked his shoulder a little bit so we wanted to hold him out a couple of days,” Murdoch said. “I think he’ll recover quick, but we may hold him out of contact this weekend.”

Despite the team potentially being without four key players, not all is lost for the Cyclones. Seniors Bill Adolph and Mike Murtaugh will still be with the team to provide leadership for the young Cyclone hockey team.

The team will be looking for a few players to fill the holes left by the three players leaving for China. Adolph not only seemed very optimistic about the team’s chances but also named a few players who he hopes to see play well these next few weeks.

“[Freshman forward Jason] Pacheco,” Adolph said. “We’ve seen glimpses of him. He’s been injured this second half with an injured foot and in that first half he had some huge goals for us, winning the game for us in that shootout [against Kent State].”

Adolph also said that he would like sophomore forward Chris Mackay get some playing time these upcoming weeks, citing injuries as the reason why Mackay has not seen as much playing time as hoped.

“That kid’s plagued with injuries,” Adolph said. “It would be awesome to see him play a good three weeks of hockey without catching an injury.”

In order to get ready for Stony Brook, Iowa State has changed up its lines because they will be three players short. They have also been working on buckling down and playing solid defense.

“We pretty much emphasized our power play penalty kill,” Murtaugh said. “We had a little bit of a rough even strength last week against Central Oklahoma. We’re going to work on our even strength. Obviously our defensive zone was a little rusty this last weekend, we’ve got to cut down on the shots. Just normal stuff that our team needs to focus on.”

The Cyclones hockey team will host Stony Brook in what will be the end of the five-week home stand on Friday at the Ames/ISU Ice Arena at 7:30 p.m. On Saturday, the team will travel to Des Moines to play at the Wells Fargo Arena at 3:00 p.m.