The ISU hockey team provided plenty of excitement last weekend as they defeated the University of Illinois Friday night 10-1 and came back from a three goal deficit in dramatic fashion to tie the Fighting Illini on Saturday 6-6.

The Ames ISU Ice Arena was packed Saturday night for the second contest with Illinois. Saturday’s game would feature the debut of Cyclone defenseman DeHang Sun, a seven foot, 270 pound veteran of the Chinese national team.

The Illini came out strong once again and struck first at 6:29 of the first period. John Paolello evened it up for ISU 19 seconds later.

The Cyclones skated two men down, but continued to provide shorthanded thrills for the capacity crowd. Darcy Anderson worked the puck into the Illinois zone and fired a shot on goal that was deflected by the Illini goalie, but the rebound came out to brother Darren Anderson who pounced on it and deposited it in the open side of the net to give ISU a 2-1 lead.

Illinois scored during the power play as well, but were held to a single goal with the man advantage thanks to the awesome goaltending of Neil Gilmore. Gilmore made a tremendous kick save and flash the quick leather twice to deny Illinois any more power play scores.

The score remained tied at two at the end of the first.

The Illini struck first once again, taking advantage of heavy traffic in front of Gilmore to score at 1:33 of the second. ISU senior Sean Weaver provided an almost immediate answer 19 seconds later when he scored off a feed from Darcy Anderson to tie the score at three.

Illinois had the first good chance at breaking the tie when the team broke out its zone and headmanned the puck beyond the pinching ISU defensemen. Gilmore was the only obstacle between the Illinois forward and the back of the Cyclone net. Gilmore came up huge blocking the shot and directing the puck to the corner.

Illinois got the next goal, however, at 9:54. The Illini increased their lead to 5-3 with a power play tally at 15:39 of the second. Despite going on the power play for two minutes at 16:31, the Cyclones couldn’t close the 5-3 gap, setting the stage for a dramatic comeback in the final period.

Illinois began the third period with a 5 on 3 advantage and scored first yet again. Then the rally was on. Darcy Anderson scored at 2:48 to close to within 2, 6-4.

Forty-three seconds later, with the crowd roaring, especially when DeHang hit the ice, John Paolello began a thrilling play. He skated into the Illinois zone and dropped the puck back to Vega. Paolello cruised to the net to take the pass back from Vega and fire it past Illini goaltender Sam Eaton to bring the Cyclones to within one.

The crowd was chanting for DeHang to return to the ice at the end of each of his shifts. DeHang didn’t disappoint the crowd that expected some big hits from the monstrous blueliner. DeHang caught a hapless Illini forward cutting through the neutral zone who had looked down to find the puck.

DeHang lambasted the forward like a freight train, separating the forward’s helmet from his head. The crowd went crazy and DeHang’s place in their hearts was assured.

“It was just a tremor of the earthquake that’s to come,” Darcy Anderson said.

Feeding off the frenzy of the crowd, the Cyclones continued to attack. With both teams skating 4 on 4, the puck was deep in the Illinois zone when the Illinois “d” tried to clear it out of the zone. ISU captain Doug Borud held it in and fired it behind the Illinois net. Wierson picked it up, wheeled out in front and fired it by the Illini goalie stick side to tie the score at six.

Regulation ended with the score tied and the teams headed to a five minute sudden-death overtime.

The Cyclones didn’t pull off the sweep, but played with tremendous emotion to erase a three-goal deficit in less than twenty minutes and come out of the weekend at 1-0-1.

“We showed a lot of determination coming back like that,” assistant coach Markus Olsson said.

Wierson was disappointed at the tie, but pleased with the team’s strong finish.

“It’s too bad we couldn’t win,” Wierson said. “It took a lot of heart to come back the way we did though.”

Friday’s contest featured a solid display of teamwork with nine different Cyclones scoring goals.

“We worked really well in our end,” Olsson said.

ISU Head Hockey Coach Al Murdoch agreed. “We played good solid defense,” Murdoch said. “We also had good balanced scoring.”

Junior netminder Rob Howitt was the anchor of the defensive effort, coming up with huge initial saves and turning aside numerous rebounds as well.

“Howitt’s an animal,” defenseman Bob Dressel said. “He plays with so much intensity everybody else on the team feeds off that.”

Howitt faced 13 Illinois shots through the first two periods, stopping them all. Illinois got only one goal with the man advantage late in the third period blowing Howitt’s shutout.

“I really wanted the shutout,” Howitt said. “We’ll take the win though.”

Illinois went on the attack immediately in the first period, but was stymied on its first three shots by Howitt who stopped the first shot and denied the Illini on two rebounds.

ISU quickly took control of the game when captain Brian Wierson scored on the power play at 5:46 of the first period.

“The power play was something we wanted to work on after the loss to the Kodiaks,” Olsson said.

The Cyclones added to their lead, again with the man advantage at 11:47. Rookie Brian Paolello was working down low when he wristed the puck at the Illinois net. Paolello was denied on his initial shot, but picked up his own rebound to beat the Illinois goaltender Devin Huber on the short side.

ISU penalty killing units, considered by the ISU coaching staff to be one of the Cyclone’s main strengths, performed brilliantly thwarting all first period Illinois power plays.

First period scoring was rounded out by the Cyclones at 16:08 on a beautiful play by Chris Poli. Poli won a draw just to the left of the Illinois goal. Poli maintained control of the puck, faked forehand, pulled it around Huber and scored with the backhand to increase the Cyclone lead to 3-0.

The Cyclones continued their special team’s assault early in the second period, this time on the penalty kill. Borud, last season’s leader in shorthanded goals with nine, took the pass from Wierson and scored at 1:21.

Borud dominated ISU’s penalty killing effort all night, a familiar role for the big winger.

“Borud was our best penalty killer last season and he’s already repeating in that role,” Murdoch said.

ISU added goals by Aaron Scharf, Mike Brown, Jason Vega and a power play tally by Anthony Penner to increase the rout to 8-0 at the end of two periods of play.

Illinois finally got on the board 6:05 of the third period with a power play goal. The Illini goal was answered by Borud when he notched his second shorthanded goal of the game at 10:33.

Darcy Anderson placed an exclamation point on the ISU blowout at 18:50 of the third. Anderson would battle in the slot, fight off some very aggressive defense and wheel around with a sweet backhand that eluded the Illinois netminder.

The Cyclones play was greatly improved from last week’s preseason loss to the Minneapolis Kodiaks.

“We worked well as a team,” Borud said, “instead of a bunch of individuals trying to do everything themselves.”

Dressel agreed and added that things will continue to click over time.

“The more we practice the more things come together,” Dressel said. “We were really aggressive on the penalty kill. We didn’t allow them to set up and kept pressure on them all the time.”

The Cyclones look solid heading into next weekend’s contests with ninth ranked Arizona State. The Cyclones expect both games to be 60 minute battles.

“They’re very physical,” captain Rusty Crawford said. “They like to play the body. They always play hungry.”

Wierson said, “We need to keep working hard in practice, fine tune some areas and things will continue to come together.”

ISU will face off against Arizona State both Friday and Saturday night at 7:30 p.m.