Game footage of an upcoming opponent is a priceless luxury that makes any coach's job easier.

For the coaches of the Penn State ACHA Division I Icers, that luxury did not exist this past week.

Despite the best efforts of head coach Scott Balboni and the coaching staff, Penn State was unable to attain any game footage of its next opponent, Niagara University.

The lack of film not only threw off the No. 3 Icers' normal preparation and practice routines, but instantly made the final game of 2006 more difficult.

Yet, while the Icers will be blind when they close out the semester against the Purple Eagles at 9 tonight in the Greenberg Ice Pavilion, their objective stays the way it has been all season.

"We definitely want to end on a positive note," assistant captain and senior forward Mike McMullen said. "We've had a great semester ... and it'd be a shame not to end it on a good note."

Had Penn State (17-3-0, 16-1-0 ACHA) been able to find any game tapes of Niagara, it would have been able to create a solid game plan and work on it throughout the week. It would have also been able to pinpoint certain players to focus on, like forward Mario Nucci, who leads the team with 12 goals, and defender Michael Novosad, who leads with 14 assists.

Instead, the Icers were forced to prepare like they did in the middle of October, even though the calendar says only a few days remain in December.

"We're preparing like we did at the beginning of the year when we didn't know a lot about the other teams," Balboni said.

"So, we went out and prepared the same way [this week]. We worked on our systems as much as we could work on them.

"We're just going to come out with the attitude that we're going to play as hard as we can and let them try to adapt to us during the game."

One area that Penn State likely worked on was its defense.

The Icers have been more than solid in their own zone pretty much all season.

They have allowed only 40 goals in 20 games and limited opponents to an average of less than 23 shots per game.

Along with the solid play of sophomore goaltender Nick Signet, the Icers' 2.00 goals against average ranks as one of the lowest in the ACHA.

But statistics only tell half of the story, according to McMullen.

"Our defense has been pretty good, but we've had some lapses," the senior said.

"Not that letting St. Clair score seven goals on us [last weekend] was really terrible because that is a good team, but I'd like to see our defense be a little stronger and limit shots on net."

Another area that McMullen would like to see improve before Penn State goes on its 26-day break is the power play.

After making several personnel and strategy changes in recent weeks, the Icers have upped their production with the man-advantage. However, a lot is still left to be desired for the Icers, and a few power-play goals tonight could do a lot of good for confidence heading into almost a four-week layoff, McMullen said.

Battered and bruised Penn State will embrace the holiday break before it returns to action with three road games in four days, starting Jan. 10 against West Chester.