Cyclone Hockey (6-4) swept the North Dakota State Bison, 15-3 and 5-0, to remain undefeated at home at the Ames/ISU Ice Arena this Homecoming weekend.

After dominating game one of the series on Friday, the Cyclones decided not to play five of their top forwards for the second game Saturday.

“They are playing very well – we are one third of the way into the season, so giving them a little extra rest doesn’t hurt,” said coach Al Murdoch. “Plus, it gives some good experience and ice time to guys that haven’t been playing as much.”

By sitting those players out for the second game, the Cyclones gave new players opportunities to play on special teams in the second game.

“We gave a lot of other people shots at it,” said sophomore defenseman Bret Cornelius. “We didn’t just roll two power plays – we had everybody play, and everyone was chopping at the bit to prove that they could be on the power play.”

These impromptu power-play units scored a power-play goal in the second game after the regular units got the relentless assault going with six goals in the first game.

The Cyclones also had a great deal of success with their penalty-killing unit. Over the course of both games, the Cyclones allowed only a single power-play goal and scored four shorthanded goals, two in each game. The Cyclones attribute this improvement in penalty killing to more aggressive play.

“During practice this week we worked on, after dumping the puck in their zone, forechecking really hard, even though we are on the penalty kill,” Cornelius said. “We can kind of catch them off guard. Sometimes we iced the puck, and our guys were rushing down so hard that sometimes we got to the puck first.”

The offense displayed great balance in its scoring; no single scorer stood out with 13 players scoring 15 goals in the first game and four players dividing up five goals in the second contest of the weekend.

“In series past, we haven’t been finishing up on our chances the way we should be, but this weekend we have been doing it more,” said freshman forward Josh Rahme. “We generated more rebounds, deflections, screens – that sort of thing – and that led to more goals.”

Cornelius was not only happy with the wins, but also with how the team won.

“There is a right way to win and a wrong way to win,” Cornelius said. “Both games, we played the right way. There were some cheap shots from the other team, and we just played our game – we didn’t really retaliate and we weren’t really rubbing it in their faces – we just played our systems.”