It wasn’t always pretty, but Cyclone Hockey was able to maintain its perfect record for another night, defeating the Oklahoma Sooners 3-1 and improving to 5-0-0 on the season. 

“There’s lessons to be learned in every game,” said coach Jason Fairman. “We were holding on at the end, there’s no question about that.”

Fairman mentioned coming into the game that the Cyclones would need to be on top of their game, otherwise the No. 20 ranked Sooners would exploit them and make them pay. While ISU certainly wasn’t at the top of their game tonight, the team did enough to come out with a win thanks to key performances from some of the team’s most experienced players.

The first period started off with the Cyclones controlling the puck in the Oklahoma zone for a prolonged period of time, which ultimately led to Iowa State drawing a penalty from Oklahoma’s Michael Behm.

Thirty-eight seconds later, the Cyclones made the Sooners pay when the team’s leading goal scorer, junior forward Tony Uglem, tallied his fourth goal of the season off a feed from fellow junior Aaron Azevedo.

“It was a great play by Aaron,” Uglem said. “I cut across the middle and I just kind of followed him up and he put it right on the stick.”

Uglem’s goal ended up being the only one of the period, but it could’ve very well been a different story had it not been for senior goalie Derek Moser.

Despite the Cyclones’ domination in puck possession throughout the first, the team had multiple turnovers that led to clean looks at the net for the Sooners.

Moser, however, was up to the task and was able to shut down the Sooners on all of their opportunities in the first period, allowing the Cyclones to hold onto their 1-0 lead going into the first intermission.

“Believe it or not, if I can actually see the shot coming, I love that.” Moser said. “The first was my favorite period, because everything was kind of like perimeter shots.”

The Cyclones started the second period in a similar fashion to the first, again scoring a goal early in the period to make the score 2-0. Azevedo notched his second point of the night, scoring on an unassisted goal. It was Azevedo’s third straight game with a goal, and said he’s feeling very confident now that he’s back on the same line that he had success with last season.

“The linemates that played together last year, we got split up a little bit and then came back together late in the season,” Azevedo said. “Now we’re kind of picking it up right where we left off last year, so that’s nice to have and obviously picking up a couple of points early gives me a lot of confidence moving forward.”

Despite the 2-0 advantage that Azevedo’s goal gave the team, the Cyclones continued to have similar problems with turnovers in the second period.

It came back to bite them when Brit Brothen committed a turnover in Iowa State’s zone, which lead to an Aaron Krominga goal for the Sooners to make it a 2-1 game. Krominga got a clean look off of the turnover and was able to elevate his shot over the right shoulder of Moser to put it in the back of the net.

Even after the goal, the Sooners continued to get multiple opportunities to even up the score as the period wore on, often off of Cyclone mistakes. Their biggest chance came as the second period ended, when the Cyclones went down two skaters as Kody Reuter and Jake Arroyo got called for minor penalties to make it a 5-on-3 opportunity going into the third period.

Just like last week against Waldorf, however, the Cyclones were able to kill off a a crucial 5-on-3 opportunity to prevent their opponent from taking control of the game. The Sooners did get another power play chance shortly after, but a physical Cyclones penalty kill did its job once again and kept the game at 2-1.

At this point, according to Fairman, fatigue started to set in for the Cyclones. Playing only three lines because of disciplinary issues allowed the Sooners to hang around and create scoring chances until the very end of the game.

“We looked slow and they were beating us to pucks, and we just started throwing it places,” Fairman said. “When you get tired the first thing to go is your mind, and I think guys started playing that way. They started turning over pucks just because they wanted their problem to become someone else’s problem.”

The shots between the two teams ended up nearly dead even because of this fatigue, with the Cyclones out-shooting the Sooners by the slimmest of margins, 34-33.

That 34th shot for the Cyclones ended up being the goal that put the game away, as Uglem scored his second goal of the night on an empty-net opportunity to give the game its final score of 3-1.

“I’m pleased that we got the win,” Fairman said. “But I still know what we need to do as a team and where we need to be, and we’re certainly not there.”

The Cyclones and Sooners will be back in action on Saturday night at Ames/ISU Ice Arena. The puck drops at 7:30pm.