The Cincinnati Cyclones moved into fourth place in the Central Division on Wednesday night, grinding out a 2-1 win over the Bloomington Bison. Cincinnati now sits at 29-26-3-0 through 58 games (61 points). The Cyclones are four points back of the Indy Fuel, one point ahead of Bloomington, and three points in front of Kalamazoo in a tight playoff race.
Cincinnati’s penalty kill went 2-for-2, and Ken Appleby stopped 21 of 22 shots to secure the important win. Marko Sikic scored what became the game-winner later in the first period, and the Cyclones locked it down defensively the rest of the way.
Game Recap
The Cyclones opened the scoring early in the first period while on the man advantage. Sam Stevens one-timed a pass from Gunnar Fontaine to give Cincinnati a 1-0 lead.
Just over halfway through the period, Sikic broke free on a clean breakaway and finished forehand to backhand to extend the lead to 2-0.
Bloomington cut the deficit to 2-1 in the second when Jordan Matushima scored his 17th of the season, but that was the only puck to beat Appleby all night.
Head coach Riley Weselowski said the game felt unusual from the start.
“The first period was a weird period. It was kind of a bookend period where I did not necessarily like the way we came out. In an important game like that, there is a bit of a feeling out, but I loved the middle part of that period. And then I did not like the later part of it. I thought it was sloppy.”
He said the win showed the group’s maturity and grit to grind through a weird night.
“It was just a weird game. It was one of those games that I am proud of the guys that we got the win. And I also cannot leave that game thinking that we really showed our best. But that is maybe a tip of the hat to the guys in that locker room that they found a way to win when we maybe did not have our best. There is some good and some bad with it, but at the end of the day, we got 2 points, and that is what matters.”
Weselowski also spoke about the overall direction of the organization and the standard they are trying to build with a young team.
“To be honest, right now, with where we are at as an organization, we just want to get to a spot where we are one of the heavy hitters in the league. Every decision that we make is how can we be better. How can we be better with our on ice product. How can we be a better organization that players want to be a part of?
The great thing about this organization is there are a lot of good pieces in place already. And there is an ownership group and a president that are super supportive of what we want to do. The fun part now is just building it, and part of building it is bringing good people in and really good players. That is what we started to do here, and it is starting to come together.”
Weselowski knows the challenge ramps up immediately with second-place Fort Wayne coming to town this upcoming weekend: Friday & Saturday nights, both at 7:35 PM ET.
“It is big. Every game is big now. There is really no difference between whether we are playing Fort Wayne or we are playing Toledo, or we are playing Bloomington, because everybody has something different to play for.
It is a team that to get anywhere in the playoffs, you are probably going to have to go through. And so it is important that you are setting the tone with a team like this. They have added some players recently, and we have added some players recently, so expect it to be a good battle, and we are looking forward to the challenge.”
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