Cyclone Hockey kicked off their season this weekend, opening at home in an exhibition series against the Junior A Minnesota Owls. The Cyclones swept the series by winning 4-2 on Friday, and 3-1 on Saturday.

The main point of the series was to get the team warmed up for the season, something the team thinks was accomplished, said senior forward Jeremy Stegall.

“It was a pretty good tempo,” Stegall said.

“Good to get the rookies some experience out of the weekend. But at the same time, it’s not as physical as it is going to be next week, so it’s kind of a building process. That is why we schedule games against junior teams, because they play pretty physical so we can a pretty good stepping stone for next week and the beginning of the regular season.”

Coach Al Murdoch agrees. He was pleased with how his team handled their first physical game of the season.

“Our style of play is physical, and this was definitely a physical series,” Murdoch said. “That is why I wanted to bring in a good Junior A team from Minnesota in here to get us warmed up. It will get tougher as the league gets going with Ohio and Eastern Michigan, and all the other league teams we will be seeing here in the next couple of weeks.”

With 21 freshmen and sophomores on the club team’s 31-man roster, the players really wanted to get a feel for each other.

“It’s good for experience to get everybody a chance to get some [playing] time and get our systems under their belt,” Stegall said.

The Cyclones feel they accomplished just that, Murdoch said.

“I think the chemistry is really good already,” Murdoch said. ” I think there is a really good effort obviously, with three goals [against] in two games, we are starting to gel on the defensive end. On the offensive end we scored seven goals [in the series]. That is three-and-a-half per game, we will take that anytime. So that is starting to show that we have had some good team play, even as early as it is.”

Even with a two-game sweep, Murdoch feels the team needs to improve.

“You can always work on everything, you can always improve. With hockey you can never be complacent with what you are doing. You have to strive to be better every week,” Murdoch said.