After a 1-0 defeat on Friday, the Cyclones had to be pleased about their defense, and not so pleased about their offense. Saturday showed a mixed bag as far as signs of improvement.

Iowa State (now 17-13-2) fell to the Robert Morris Eagles 5-2 on Saturday and didn’t show many signs of offense. 

The Cyclones gave up a goal in the first period to make it 1-0 Eagles, but the second period is really when the pucks started flying around, and not in Iowa State’s favor. 

The teams traded goals very early in the second period, with the Eagles getting a shorthanded goal. Brooks Mitzel was able to sneak one past the goaltender off an assist from David Rutkowski. Robert Morris added another one, and almost exactly halfway through the game, it was 3-1 in favor of the Eagles. 

That’s when the wheels really came off the Cyclones’ bus. Robert Morris netted two more goals before the horn sounded, and all of a sudden it was 5-1. The Cyclones continued their trend of getting a substantial amount of shots on net, the shots were 39-19 in favor of Iowa State, but only one goal was the result of those 39 shots.

Iowa State was able to add another goal in the early stages of the third period to make it 5-2 off the stick of points leader and captain Dylan Goggin, but being down four goals going into the third is a somewhat insurmountable deficit. 

Aaron LaChance was in net for the Cyclones again, and gave up the five goals off of just 25 shots. The Cyclones got a whopping 53 shots on goal, but were only able to muster the two goals.

The Cyclones came into the weekend ranked 23rd, while Robert Morris was ranked 25th. It’s hard to say what will happen to the rankings after this weekend, but it’s safe to say that every game from here on out matters for Iowa State, including the CSCHL playoffs in about a month.

The Cyclones return home next weekend for a tilt with highly-talented University of Ohio.