In what was pegged to be a hard-fought and tightly played defensive struggle between two of the ACHA's top teams, the No. 4 Penn State ACHA Division I Icers once again found a way to win.

The Icers were looking to shore up their defense after giving up 12 goals in three games the previous weekend, and then four more during Friday's 5-4 win against No. 1 Illinois. Icers head coach Joe Battista even said after the first game with Illinois that, "we certainly didn't play like two teams that were going to put defense first."

During Saturday's 6-3 win, the Icers found that maybe a good defense would come from a powerful offense.

Early in the game Penn State took control, keeping the puck in the Illinois zone and dominating the first five minutes of play. The scoreboard showed that the Illini had recorded only two shots at this point, but neither attempt had been a real threat to score.

Junior forward Mike McMullen said that the team's plan was to come out aggressively Saturday night against an Illini team that had lost three straight games after starting the season with an 18-game win streak.

McMullen punctuated the attacking mentality when he received the puck just outside the Illini zone on an Icers' power play seven minutes into the first period. Skating in from freshman goalie Andy Sundt's right, McMullen leaned in hard and fired a low backhand at the net. Sundt made the bad save but kicked out a juicy rebound into the slot where freshman Luke DeLorenzo pounced on it and gave the Icers a 1-0 lead.

The goal was just one of DeLorenzo's four tallies on the evening and came by way of making the Illini's freshman goalie give up a big rebound.

"That's one of the things coach [Battista] went over -- he said to shoot it low," DeLorenzo said. "He felt that [Sundt] was going to put rebounds out in the slot and get rebounds, which is actually how we scored our first goal when McMullen shot it and he kicked it out to me and got a rebound."

The Icers kept up the attack, routinely drawing Illinois penalties and cashing in on the man advantage. DeLorenzo scored three goals on the power play for the Icers, and sophomore Nate Obringer added his second of two goals and the Icers' sixth of the night, just seconds after an Illinois major penalty expired early in the third period.

The constant attack of the Icers was seen as the top power play unit of DeLorenzo, McMullen, Obringer, freshman Frank Berry and sophomore defenseman Keith Jordan was consistently sent out on the ice. Not until the start of the third period, with the Icers working on a five-minute man advantage, did Battista send out a secondary lineup.

"One of the things we talked about in our pre-game meeting was developing a killer instinct," Battista said. "You get a team down by two goals, you gotta bury them."

Battista also noted how his team was able to respond every time the Illini could begin to claw their way back into the game. No event exemplified this better than Obringer's laser that beat Sundt short side above his stick midway through the second period. The goal came just 15 seconds after the Illini used a power-play goal to make it a one-goal game at 3-2. Obringer's tally put the Illini down two, a margin they would never recover from.

"We felt that if we could jump on them early, we could kind of, I don't want to say bury them, but we could get a step on them," DeLorenzo said.

A quick start and relentless attack allowed for the Icers to not only step on the No. 1 tam in the nation, but to sweep them, and make a case for their own ascent to the top of the rankings.