With the No. 1 Penn State ACHA Div. I Icers trailing 4-3 and just under five minutes left in the third period of the ACHA National Championship game, hope for a fifth consecutive National Championship began to fade as the Icers scrambled to try and tie the score.

As they had done so often before, Penn State's two most dynamic players stepped onto the ice and changed the momentum of the game. Forwards Glenn Zuck and Kevin Jaeger teamed up for, what Penn State Icers coach Joe Battista called, one of the top five prettiest goals he's seen in his tenure at Penn State.

As the puck approached Zuck, he reached back with one hand on his stick, softly pulled the puck in between his skates and, in one fluid motion, kicked it forward onto his waiting blade. Jaeger, reading the play, darted up ice and one-timed a perfect cross-ice feed from Zuck past Ohio goalie Brian Gallagher, tying the game at four.

"At that point, I thought we were going to win," Battista said at the Icers' season-opening press conference on Monday. "Even if it went to overtime, we were still pretty confident."

However, confidence alone isn't enough and luck just wasn't on Penn State's side. With 2:56 left on the clock, Ohio threw the puck at the net and watched as it deflected off of the blade of Penn State forward Justin DePretis' stick, through the legs of Scott Blackman, and into the net.

Losing any game in that manner is hard enough, but to lose the national championship finals like that makes it easy to overlook the Icers' overall successful season.

The season was filled with high-points nonetheless for Penn State.

The 2003-2004 Penn State Icers set the single season record for most wins in school history, going 33-2 in the regular season and 3-1 at nationals, giving the team an overall record of 35-3. The previous record was set in the 1992-1993, when the team finished 33-1 and, coincidentally, also National Champion runner-up.

On Saturday, Jan. 31, with an 8-1 victory over Michigan-Dearborn, Battista won his 450th game as head coach of the Icers. As an avid preacher of "defense wins championships," it seemed only fitting that the Icers held Michigan-Dearborn to only one goal in two games during that weekend.

The season was also the final one for Zuck, one of Penn State's most prolific scorers. He finished the season with 97 points and set the single-season assists record with 59. He finished his Icers' career sitting second in career points (308), goals (124) and assists (184).

Jaeger didn't set a record last season in goals but set himself up to possibly pass Icers great Lynn Sipe as Penn State's career goal leader. Jaeger finished the season with 105 career goals and needs only 22 more this season to earn that honor.

While rotating three goalies throughout the season, Blackman, a junior, managed to break off a shutout streak that included four games, nine periods and just over 184 minutes of hockey. Although it was not in consecutive games because of the goalie rotation, the streak is no less impressive.

Coming into this season, the Icers are taking the best possible approach to the loss they suffered in the ACHA National Championship finals a year ago.

"I think it's kind of taken the targets off our backs," Jaeger said. "... I don't, personally, think that the Ohio game was some downfall to the [Icers'] program. Ohio is a great team."

This year, Penn State will look to prove that point and start a new streak of national championship victories.