A sign at the entrance to the Greenberg Ice Pavilion reads "Fighting will not be permitted in this facility."

Apparently the Penn State Icers and Ohio University didn't get the memo.

The two-game set this weekend was chalk-full of fights and aggressive play. On more than six occasions, play was halted because of on-ice altercations. These amounted to only a small proportion of the 95 total penalty minutes the teams committed collectively.

Alone, Penn State had 18 minutes of penalties on Friday and 23 on Saturday. Icers head coach Scott Balboni was not pleased with amount of time his team spent in the penalty box.

"I'm very frustrated in the way we're playing right now, selfishly," he said. "Because we're taking a ton of penalties, my team is going to pay the price for it this week in practice."

Balboni expected the weekend to be full of hard hits and in-your-face play between the two rivals. The high amount of penalty time resulted mainly from over-physical play by the Icers, who committed 19 minutes of roughing, charging, and unsportsman-like conduct penalties alone.

Senior forward Michael McMullen was heavily involved in the physical part of the contests. In Friday's game, he was injured while taking a heavy hit alongside the boards behind the Icer net. In Saturday's game, he dished out the pain, committing a five-minute major for a check from behind.

While sporting multiple ice packs after Saturday's game, McMullen said the team's physicality forced Ohio into committing a great amount of penalties.

"We were all over them," he said. "We were so aggressive, it got to them. We took the puck to the net and kept our feet moving. That made them pull us down to prevent scoring chances."

Even though Penn State committed so many penalties, the team successfully killed every one of them. Ohio had 14 opportunities to score with an extra man, but the Icers penalty kill withstood. Balboni said his players' work on the penalty kill looked phenomenal.

Junior forward Jaime Zimmel, who was involved in multiple scuffles on the ice, also spoke highly of their special teams.

"We've been practicing a lot for this sort of thing, shifting and calling out our guys and we've been blocking shots too," he said. "This is probably the best penalty kill we've had in three years."

On the other side of special teams, Penn State also took advantage of Ohio penalties. In addition to a short-handed goal, the Icers scored on four power plays. Balboni said it wasn't the best power play he had ever seen, but was proud of the improvement.

"One of our keys was trying to get the puck to the net," he said. "They (Ohio) played very well defensively. They don't give you a lot down in front of the net, but we were able to make some opportunities happen."

Zimmel said physical play is what the team has been looking for.

"You hit someone, you get a puck in deep, you get a shot on net and you're off the ice," he said. "Those are the games you want to play every day."