FLORENCE - After splitting a pair of games in Florida last weekend, the Pee Dee Cyclones returned home to Florence only to cancel Wednesday’s practice at the Civic Center because the ice wasn’t ready.

Thursday’s practice was moved to the Carolina Coliseum in Columbia due to a previously scheduled concert. But that hasn’t changed the team’s focus on its next two opponents.

“We haven’t skated all week, so there will probably be some rust we need to shake off,” Pee Dee coach Mark Richards said.

Pee Dee hits the ice tonight against a Columbus team that, despite winning the Southern Professional Hockey League title last season, is languishing in the cellar this season.

The Cyclones will then face a Knoxville team Saturday night that boasts the league’s leading goaltender in James Ronayne and his 2.65 goals against average.

Going into this weekend’s play, Pee Dee forward Shaun Aebig is tied with Fayetteville’s Tyler Perry and Knoxville’s Kevin Swider atop the league in scoring with 11 points.

Trevor Karasiewicz is tied for fourth place with 10 points, and Jean-Francois Picard leads all defensemen with eight points.

The Cyclones head into the next two meetings on home ice having played four straight overtime games, including their 2-1 win over Florida last Friday and 6-5 loss in Jacksonville on Saturday.

“You want to be at least .500 on the road and dominate at home,” said Cyclones goaltender Mark Cairns, who stopped 29 shots in Saturday’s loss. “We’ve got a lot of ground to gain so we need to be dominant this weekend.”

Despite gaining three points in the SPHL standings and moving into third place behind rival Fayetteville and Huntsville, the team feels that more needs to be done to turn Pee Dee into a championship team.

“We were kind of sluggish, but we somehow managed to get points on the road,” Richards said. “Our power plays and penalty-killing went down last weekend.”

“We came out flat early (against Jacksonville), but we got hot in the third period,” Picard said. “We have to be more prepared in the first and second periods to gain points consistently in this league.”

One area in which the Cyclones need improvement is their defense, particularly in the third period. Pee Dee has given up scores after the second intermission in three of their last four contests, so shutting the door on their opponents late is the primary focus of this team.

“Winning hockey starts with your defense,” Picard said. “In the last two games, we’ve only played 55 minutes of hockey. We have to get better defensively.”

“We can’t afford to take time off in any game we play this season,” Richards said. “We were lucky to get three points out of the trip, but we can’t continue to play like this.” Cairns takes the challenge personally.

“I think we’re still growing as a team, but we showed a lot of character (in Saturday’s game),” he said. “Personally, I don’t like to give up leads late, so that’s something I have to work on. As a team, we need to develop a killer instinct.”