Cyclone Hockey’s season can be summarized in many ways: its abundance of seniors, its scoring struggles, or the roller coaster ride of the team’s results are among the many possible characterizations. But for some of the team, the season comes down to one thing — team identity.

That identity helped the team through the highs and the lows of the long 44-game season.

“We were a hard-working team that had to work for everything we got,” said Cyclone Hockey head coach Jason Fairman. “That’s how it was until the very end.”

They worked to score.

Nobody scored more than 14 goals in the regular season. A defenseman, senior Antti Helanto, had the most points on the team with 32, and was the only player on the team with 30-plus points.

“We had a lot of good players, but we had a lot of the same kind of players,” Fairman said about the scoring troubles. “Guys who work hard. It’s one of those things, goal scorers, they aren’t easy to find and you can’t coach that. Some guys just have it.”

They worked against tough competition.

The Cyclones played 30 of their 44 games against teams ranked in the American Collegiate Hockey Association top 25. They also played in the Central States Collegiate Hockey League, where every team finished the season 15th or higher in the rankings and a league that many around hockey considered the hardest in the ACHA.

And they worked despite some tough luck.

Throughout the Cyclones’ whirlwind of a 2014-15 season, they repeated that they were receiving the bad end of the luck spectrum or as they called it: “puck luck.”

“If we made a mistake, it ended up costing us,” Fairman said. “We didn’t get a lot of breaks this year. We got a few, but it seems like most of the breaks went against us. A lot of people say you make your own breaks, but I think we worked hard.”

Those bad breaks included a bad bounce off a referee’s skate Dec. 13, which led to a Robert Morris goal and an eventual Cyclones loss. A puck that hit the back of goaltender Matt Cooper’s leg against Illinois during overtime in the CSCHL Tournament sent the Cyclones packing.

The Cyclones struggled to find that hard-working mentality when they reached their low point in the season. A stretch in October and November gave the Cyclones a loss in 10 of 15 games. One of those losses was a heartbreaker to CSCHL rival Lindenwood with 1.2 seconds remaining in the game.

But the Cyclones did some soul searching and found their personality. The players attempted to forget the previous rough sailing and forged the sentiment that it was a “new season.” That new-found motivation took flight after the year turned anew.

It certainly helped that new faces were coming into the lineup as well. Chase Rey returned from an upper-body injury he sustained in the previous season and newly-transferred forward Andrew Carlson came from Hamline University. Both were welcomed additions to a lineup that was struggling to score goals. Captain defenseman Mike Dopko also returned from a finger injury that sidelined him for all of December.

The fully rostered Cyclones started with a two-game sweep against CSCHL opponent Illinois for the first two wins of 2015. The Cyclones next took a game against the then-No.2 ranked Central Oklahoma Bronchos and one against then-No. 6 ranked Robert Morris. In their two final games of the regular season in late February, the Cyclones dominated the Midland Warriors, scoring 18 goals in two games.

“[The winning stretch] was very important to our season and how far it helped us go,” Rey said. “Coming back from [Winter] Break and having that time to refuel really did help out the guys. As most people know, that’s when the playoff hunt begins.”

Despite finishing last in the CSCHL during the regular season, the Cyclones grabbed a No. 10 seed for the ACHA National Tournament. But first they had to play their conference tournament.

That tournament didn’t go well for the Cyclones after they lost in the first round to Illinois, but the defeat didn’t dishearten them as they prepared for the ACHA National Tournament.

The Cyclones were pitted against the No. 7 Oklahoma Sooners, a team that handed them a second round exit from the 2014 tournament. The Cyclones won in upset fashion 3-1. They would end up losing to eventual-national champion Central Oklahoma, but the point was made.

“We were kind of an underdog coming in, so we played with a chip on our shoulder,” said Seth Serhienko. “We were with it with Central Oklahoma. If we beat them, we could’ve won it. We were a force to be reckoned with and proved we deserved to be a top 10 team.”

The year came to a close earlier than the Cyclones would’ve liked, but it set the precedent for the next season of Cyclone Hockey.

“This year was a little bit of a rollercoaster ride,” Rey said. “We had to work for every win we had this season. With the way we battled and ended the year, there is reason to be very optimistic for next season.”