After almost six months of play, the top 16 teams in the American Collegiate Hockey Association will duke it out this weekend to decide who is the best.

Cyclone Hockey will take the No. 10 seed going into the national tournament in Rochester, New York, which begins on Saturday and ends with the championship game being played on Wednesday.

The Cyclones go into the tournament with high expectations for themselves.

“I think this is our year to win it,” said sophomore forward Pete Majkozak.

These expectations, however, are set no lower than expectations for the regular season.

“I go into every game expecting to win,” said head coach Al Murdoch. “I go into every tournament expecting to win the number-one trophy. This is no exception. We are going to take it a period at a time, a game at a time, a shift at a time, but I think we will be the better prepared team at nationals.”

Although the Cyclones expect to win, they are definite underdogs going into the tournament – a role the team seems to relish.

“I like being the underdog because teams kind of take you for granted a lot of the time and you can usually come out on the upper end if you just work hard,” said junior forward Mike Murtaugh.

“In the Central States [tournament] last year, we were the underdog going into it and we ended up winning the whole thing. Then, going to nationals, we were supposed to win our first game and we don’t,” Murtaugh said.

The Cyclones are 10-2 against teams that made it to the tournament, including a two-game sweep against Ohio, their opponent for the first round. As for the lost games, the team feels they had a fighting chance.

“A lot of those games, we played hard and we just couldn’t finish the game … it seems like a lot of those games, we had them on the ropes and when we had chances to score, we weren’t scoring, which is a little bit different from what we have been doing in the last few games,” Murtaugh said. “Since we are putting the puck in the net a little more, I think that will help.”

Many of the Cyclones’ losses came early in the season. Majkozak believes that they are a better team now.

“I think we are peaking at the right time,” Majkozak said. “I think this is when we are playing our best hockey. We are scoring more goals than we were [early in the season] and, defensively, we aren’t allowing as many.”

But the road to the championship will not be easy, and that difficulty will begin in the first round against seventh-seeded Ohio.

“We are going to see a pretty pumped Ohio,” Murdoch said.

“Ohio got upset in the first round last year, so they are not going to be looking to get upset this year. But I think we are the team that can do it, but it will take a concerted effort. We have to stay out of the penalty box, because they have one of the best power plays in the country. We have to score on our power play because they will take penalties,” Murdoch said.