One night after besting Kent State in a hard fought 3-2 victory, Iowa State returned to the ice seeking a series sweep and a perfect homestand.

The first period saw Kent State take an early 1-0 lead off of a goal from senior forward Eddie Martin with 16:25 remaining. Iowa State would quickly respond with a goal from junior forward Pete Majkozak with 10:34 to go. Kent State would later regain the lead off of Martin’s second goal of the period with only :56 seconds remaining.

In the second period, the Golden Flashes would extend its lead to with a goals coming at the 13:03, 4:37 and 2:57 remaining. Trailing 5-1, Iowa State needed to respond and did so with a pair of goals to close out the second period. The first was a goal from Spring with 1:58 left in the period. The second goal was scored by sophomore defenseman Pat Condon with only :18 seconds left.

Iowa State headed into the third period trailing 5-3 and in need of a comeback.

And what a dramatic comeback it was.

After a powerplay goal and Martin’s third goal of the game, it looked as if Kent State was pulling away witha 7-3 lead. Iowa State, however, had a different idea.

The furious comeback began when Spring connected for his 2nd goal of the game with 14:00 minutes to go. Freshman forward Jason Pacheco would cut the lead to 2 with a score of his own at the 12:54 mark. Spring in  need of only one more goal for a hat trick would score his third goal with 8:17 remaining to make it a 7-6 game. The comeback would be completed when junior defenseman Adam Mueller scored a goal with 3:28 remaining.

After an extra session of play and no winner, the game would have to be decided by a shootout. Despite being pulled in the second period, sophomore goalie Erik Hudson would get the call in the shootout session and would not allow any of the four Kent State shooters to score. After misses from Spring, Toigo and Mueller, it was Pacheco who would send the fans and Cyclones players home happy with an 8-7 shootout win.

After the game, Pacheco had this to say about his gamewinning goal.

“It felt good, our team worked hard tonight so it felt good to give everybody something to smile about, it wasn’t just me, it was the goal, it was the whole team, it felt good,” Pacheco said.

According to Spring, he took it upon himself to get the Cyclones back into the game and knew that even though they only had one more period left to tie it up, there was still a lot of fight left in the team.

“We knew we had to keep going, there’s no point in giving up,” Spring said. “We were down two going in and then gave up two more and I was in the box for one of them and I had to get that one back to get my team back into it. We were outplaying them all game and once we got one, we got rolling and they couldn’t stop us.”