It has been season of highs and lows for Cyclone Hockey.

After losing five of their last six American Collegiate Hockey Association games going into the series Oct. 24, the No. 10 Cyclones (9-5-2) swept the then-No. 13 Michigan-Dearborn Wolverines.

The Wolverine series looked to be a turning point in the season after the Cyclones won an overtime game against the No. 8 Ohio Bobcats (10-2-2) Oct. 31 for the club’s third straight win. Hockey coach Jason Fairman even said, “Finally,” as he addressed his team after the win.

But in the second game of the Bobcats series on Nov. 1, the Cyclones lost 4-2. The Cyclones looked to be keeping its form early in the first period, scoring the first goal of the game.

Following multiple penalties that caused a 3-on-3 situation midway through the first period, the tables turned in Ohio’s favor. The Bobcats controlled play from then on and scored three of their next four goals unanswered.

After a season where he continuously said that his team outperformed others despite a poor record to show for it, Fairman admitted that they were simply outplayed.

“I’ve had moments where I was disappointed in periods, but this is the first game where I am completely disappointed in how our team played,” Fairman said after the loss. “We got outplayed, flat out. I haven’t said that all year, but tonight we were just outplayed. After the penalty situation in the first, I didn’t even recognize my team.”

After the overtime victory in the first game of the series, the Cyclones may have gotten ahead of themselves causing the poor game.

“We are a team of two extremes,” Fairman said. “We feel pretty good of ourselves; we are on a three-game winning streak, beat some pretty good teams. Now we are thinking, ‘Hey, we are going to win the rest of them,’ and we come out and don’t show up and bring the effort.”

Cyclone Hockey allowed four goals in a game for the first time all season and had 40 penalty minutes, also the most for the team in an ACHA game this season.

The penalties were the biggest problem for Cyclone Hockey on Nov. 1, with one of them causing assistant captain Nate Percy to leave the game. Senior captain and defenseman Mike Dopko partly attributed that to the difference in results between the two games.

“[On Oct. 31] the game flowed a little better because there were less penalties, but that’s not an excuse for how we played,” Dopko said. “There were a lot of penalties called [Nov. 1]. You know, it’s tough for both teams in that case because it throws out the momentum of the game. They obviously responded better than we did, and things just didn’t go our way.”

Looking ahead to more conference play, the series showed that the team can’t take any wins for granted.

“Just because we win the first game doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t bring it to the second game even more,” said forward Zack Johnson, who scored the overtime winner in Oct. 31’s victory. “We didn’t play with the same intensity we did [Oct. 31], and Ohio definitely wanted it more than us. We just didn’t play to the best of our ability.”