After a week off, NIU’s D-III hockey returned to action with a pair of games against Robert Morris.

The Huskies, (13-9-1-1) earned two points on Friday with a 5-3 victory over the Eagles, (2-24-2).

NIU got off to a good start in the game’s first 20 minutes, outscoring Robert Morris, 2-0.

The Eagles would respond in the second period, scoring two unanswered goals of their own.

Graduate student David Freitag said the Huskies were not executing as well offensively and defensively in the second period.

“We weren’t all moving our feet,” Freitag.”We were rushing passes and we weren’t hitting the net with shots. We were giving them odd-man breaks into our end.”

The Huskies rebounded in the third with three goals that catapulted them to the victory.

Sophomore Jon Pounds led the way for the Huskies with three goals. Pounds was happy to see his work in practice finally pay off.

” You can see the dividends in the games,” Pounds said, “You just skate faster, and you get better handling the puck.”

Saturday, the Huskies earned a weekend sweep of the Eagles with a 8-7 victory.

Six different Huskies scored goals in the victory, including senior Erik Cosgrove, who scored scored the game-winning goal as well as his first goal of the season..

NIU coach John Lyne said Saturday’s victory was extra special because it was senior night for the team’s nine seniors.

“It was good to see our seniors stepped up yesterday, and most of them scored goals in their last home game,” Lyne said.

Huskies captain Pat Giannini felt there’s plenty of things the team needs to work on this week, despite the fact the team was able to come away with four points this weekend.

“I’d definitely say were happy to get the four points out of weekend at the end of the two nights, but we definitely need to step our game up if we want to have a chance of winning next weekend,” Giannini said.