Cyclones hockey heads for nationals with 'anticipation' galore

GENEVA – A nine-hour bus trip to Amherst, New York, awaited the Cyclones Amateur Hockey Association Midget 18U team on Wednesday.

Players tried to relax as best they could during the final and most necessary barrier before the Geneva-based club begins the Youth Tier II national tournament Thursday.

"There's a lot of anticipation," said center Dawson Marshall, a St. Charles North junior. "We're all ready for it. We all hang out together and stuff, so we all get hyped up about it all the time. We feel like we can do some damage at nationals. We know we're one of the best teams, if not the best team around, so hopefully we can do some good things."

The Cyclones enter the tournament with a 40-9-6 record and a sense of urgency many years in the making.

A majority of the team shares a seasons-long bond that began during players' developmental days as Cyclones mites and squirts at Fox Valley Ice Arena.

For instance, the top line of left wing Conner Bingham (Batavia), right wing Derek Struwing (South Elgin) and center Kyle Tintera (Glenbard North) typically has skated together for the past six years. It might even be more, as the group smiled while scanning its collective memory bank on the matter.

"I think we're ready to go and compete and play," Struwing said. "I know that our season's been a pretty good one. It started off a little rough and shaky and then we kind of got our legs under us and we've kind of just been rolling through. It's been a lot of fun this year."

After winning Thanksgiving and Martin Luther King, Jr. tournament championships during the regular season, the Cyclones earned a Central States Developmental Hockey League title for the second successive year.

That paved the way to this month's Illinois Tier II state championship, which culminated in a 3-2 victory against the Sabres in the tournament finals.

Tintera, the Cyclones' captain, said the team sweat through the tense final moments as the Sabres pulled their goaltender and threatened late in the Cyclones zone. Goaltender Sam Leckbee, a St. Charles North alumnus now attending Elgin Community College as he mulls the next step in his hockey career, ultimately preserved the lead by channeling his renewed resolve.

"When I first had started playing, I would kind of come to the rink and honestly mess around. I would just kind of laugh and joke before the games," Leckbee said. "But now I kind of go off and do my own thing before. I've found what works for me. Everybody has their own kind of little thing to get them prepared."

For Leckbee, that typically entails bouncing a ball against a wall to harness his hand-eye coordination, a fitting image for coach John Krall's assessment of the Cyclones as "a very resilient group."

"We're a team that doesn't give up," Marshall said. "It definitely helps if we get the lead early, but I know that if we go down one or two goals, we're going to fight back. We have a team that can score a lot of goals. As long as we can put some in the net, we know we've got goalies to back us up and we've got a strong team."

The Cyclones scored seven goals in their season opener on Sept. 18 and have scored no fewer than three goals in 16 of their past 17 games.

The team, part of the 3A bracket in Tier II, begins its nationals run against Center State (New York) Thursday afternoon. Its opener Friday, against the Gulf Coast (Florida) Flames, begins at 8:15 a.m. local time.

"I personally had never even played for a state championship, let alone we're all going to nationals," Leckbee said. "So I think everybody's pretty pumped up for that. It's great for our organization, and we have a pretty good chance to win everything this year. It's pretty cool."