The ISU hockey team continued to rack up the wins last weekend defeating St. Louis University and Palmer College en route to capturing the Governor’s Cup Tournament Championship at the Ames ISU Ice Arena.

Friday night’s contest was decided early as ISU’s first goal at 1:19 of the first period proved to be the game winner in a 21-0 drubbing.

ISU’s leading scorer Darcy Anderson tallied the game winner, skating around Billiken forward Chris Coulter and firing the puck over the shoulder of goalie Jon Wofford.

The pace of the onslaught picked up quickly. Cyclone Mike Anderson made an awesome no look backhand pass to linemate Wade Eldridge who one-timed the puck into the Billiken net to give ISU a 2-0 lead. Only 16 seconds later Darcy’s brother Darren, number two in the Cyclone scoring race, took the puck down the slot and faked a backhand shot. The Billiken netminder bit and committed. As soon as the goaltender went down, Darren went to the forehand to increase the Cyclone lead to 3 goals and chase Wofford from the game.

Wofford was replaced by Alex Graham. It might as well have been Alex Trebek as the Cyclones scored seven seconds after he took the ice. ISU captain Brian Wierson scored with the assists to Aaron Scharf and Darren.

The Cyclones didn’t score for nine minutes, but kept up the intensity level and the pace they had set since the first faceoff including big-time bodychecking from Chris Poli and John Paolello.

“We just played our kind of hockey,” assistant coach Markus Olsson said. “We didn’t let up even with a big lead. We were the much better team.”

Scharf notched another assist at 12:50 battling the puck away from St. Louis “D” Bill Zeraga and passing it to Darren who had set up to Graham’s short side just outside the crease. Darren easily deflected the puck past Graham who never picked up on Darren’s position.

Less than two minutes later Darcy took center stage on a breakaway. Darcy bore down on Graham as the Billiken goalie drifted back toward his net. Darcy held up and Graham made the first move. Darcy seized the opening and fired the forehand shot by Graham’s glove.

The Cyclone defense lit up the scoreboard as well. Cyclone blueliner Anthony Penner scored the first of three goals on the night at 15:55 with a blast from the point that Graham couldn’t pick up through the mass of traffic in front of him.

With a 7-0 lead before the end of the first period, the Cyclones pressed the attack. Wierson completed a sweet one-time feed to Darren to complete the Ontario native’s third hat-trick of the season.

The first period came to a merciful end, but not until the Cyclones added one more goal from defenseman Greg Jones whose slapshot whizzed through Graham’s five-hole to give ISU a 9-0 lead after one.

ISU opened up second period scoring at 1:19 with some nice tape to tape to tape passing. Rookie Brian Paolello scored the goal after some impressive passing from Jason Vega to Poli and finally to Brian.

After Eldridge scored his second goal, Darren popped in his fourth pouncing on a loose puck in the crease and deposited it in the Billiken net. Scharf notched his third point of the game at 4:16 battling in the goalmouth and poking the puck in to give the Cyclones a 13-0 edge after two periods of play.

The massacre continued in the final period with ISU goals from Penner, Darcy on a nice pass from ISU captain Doug Borud and Jason Vega. ISU added another five goals in the second half of the period to complete the 21-0 win.

Cyclone goalie Rob Howitt faced only five shots during the contest and turned them all aside for his second shutout of the year.

“It’s good to get a shutout,” ISU Head Coach Al Murdoch said. “Howitt was good til the end. He kept focused and came out and played pucks to keep the game going.”

The game went very quickly for a 21-goal affair mainly because only five penalties were called throughout the game.

“There weren’t a lot of whistles,” Murdoch said.

Friday’s win proved once again just how deep the Cyclones are this year. “We had very good, balanced scoring,” Murdoch said. “Everybody contributed.”

Darren was the Cyclones’ leading scorer for the game with four goals and three assists. Darren said that the game displayed the team’s progress so far this season.

“The final score just goes to show where we are,” Darren said. “We’ve really started to gel as a team and things should only continue to roll.”

The Cyclones faced off against Palmer College Saturday night, coming away with an 11-3 win in another dominating performance.

ISU opened the scoring at 6:50 of the first as Darcy deflected the puck past Palmer goalie Dell Johnston with the man advantage. ISU added another goal to take a 2-0 lead into the first intermission.

Poli scored the first goal of the second period at 6:25 winning a faceoff to the left of Johnston and taking the puck in himself, decking Johnston and burying the puck.

Cyclone goalie Neil Gilmore preserved the ISU shutout at 8:05 when he gloved a breakaway chance by Dragon forward Andre Halle.

The Dragons eventually got on the board at 16:03 of the second as right-winger Mike Forbes beat Gilmore high to the short side to bring the Dragons to within three.

That’s as close as they got to the red hot Cyclones who added goals in the second period from Borud on a great feed from Sean Weaver and another from the big Cyclone winger, this time from Darcy on the one-time pass.

Poli backhanded a nice pass to Jones and 14 seconds later ISU’s Mike Brown scored on a pass from Penner.

The Anderson brothers each notched a goal in the third to cap the Cyclone victory 11-3.

Penner completed the weekend as the Cyclone’s top scoring defenseman in the tournament with three goals and three assists.

The Cyclones were able to keep the intensity level up through the weekend despite getting off to huge leads in both contests.

“When we have gotten off to starts like that before, we had some bad habits,” Olsson said. “This weekend, however, we kept the level of play up. I have to give the guys a lot of credit.”

With the weekend sweep, the Cyclones improved to 8-0-3 overall. ISU travels to Wisconsin next weekend, November 8 and 9 to battle Wisconsin-Whitewater in a CSCHL matchup. The Cyclones return home November 15 and 16 to host Marquette at the Ames ISU Ice Arena.

The ISU women’s club will play an intrasquad game this Saturday at 10:00 pm at the ice arena.