After skating 10 laps and four sets of suicides, the No. 2 Penn State ACHA Division I Icers stood hunched over at the blue line with sweat dripping through their facemasks, awaiting the next drill from coach Scott Balboni.

"This is where we are going to win games in the next four weeks," he screamed.

"It's the third period, [crappy] ice, tired legs and we got to score some goals!"

After playing five games in seven days last week, the Icers are back to their normal practice routines with hard skates for conditioning and drills to prepare for the final minutes.

With four games against top-10 opponents on their schedule, the Icers are preparing for those critical late-game situations -- although there were few of them during the regular season.

"We've had a lot of games lately, but we need to work on conditioning for games later this season," Penn State defenseman Keith Jordan said. "If we make the national title game, it will be our fourth game in five nights and the work will be worth it."

The Icers spent the second half of practice skating laps and suicides and working on backchecking and scoring on bad ice conditions.

The laps and suicides not only tired the team out for later drills, but it also made the ice surface horrible, as ruts and gashes made puck handling harder for the remainder of practice.

After the ice conditions worsened, the Icers began a backchecking drill, placing them one-on-one with each other. Both players had to take a turn trying to score and attempting to stop the other man.

"The suicides are used to get our legs moving and tire us out," Icers' forward Nate Obringer said.

"As for the backchecking drill, it's my least favorite of all our drills, but it's one of the biggest parts of the game so you just have to stay focused."

The Icers were practicing without forward Matt Schwartz who injured his knee in a knee-on-knee collision Saturday game against Drexel.

The MRI was not conducted until Tuesday night, and the results were not available as of press time last night.

Penn State also worked on a three-on-three drill at the end of practice exclusively in the neutral zone. The nets were on the red line, and the focus was to get the team scoring opportunities on a choppy ice surface in tight places.

"One of the things we really pride ourselves on is wearing teams down and beating them up," Balboni said. "I wanted to get some work on conditioning to remind the guys we're going to win games late on bad ice even though we're tired and worn down because we work harder than other teams."