Alumni team wins annual Alumni-Titans hockey game

Rebounds from two-year drought

By Than Acuff 

So many things played into the final result of the annual Alumni-Titans hockey game, a time-honored local tradition and sharing of Yuletide cheer, and beer.

For starters, the Alumni team may be as good as it’s ever been. It’s not that they were that bad in past years, just not as good. The influx of recent Titan grads, some of whom are still playing hockey, has made a noticeable difference in keeping pace with the current Crested Butte Titans high school players. That said, big shout out to veteran alums Sully Marshall and Michael Hensley (Class of 2018), the oldest of the Alumni crew. Hensley graduated from college a couple of days prior to the game, took in some pheasant hunting and then rallied back home for the game.

Having Tanner Perkins in net certainly helped. Maybe it was the coaching of Jack “Jackie” Collins. But perhaps the deciding factor was the running clock. Even in the tightest of games, the fresh legs of the high school team would eventually rise to the top after three periods of play. This year, all three periods had a running clock and it proved fortuitous in the end.

The Alumni got on the board first taking a 1-0 lead off a goal from Colm Piccaro, which is often the case in these games as the Alumni are always all kinds of fired up in the first period.

Perkins came up big in net for the Alumni in the second period as did rotating Titan goalies Shane Mensing and Gustav Desaulniers, as Mensing played the first and half of the second period and Desaulniers then took over.

The Alumni did add a second goal though through the wide-open play of the second period as a shot from Braydon Duncan was tipped in by Jack Lambert for a 2-0 Alumni lead heading into the second period.

It’s about now that every Alumni hockey team falls apart. It could be their choice of beverages on the bench, or it could be their lack of fitness, or both, but this year was different. The Alumni made a point of building on their two-goal lead early in the third period winning the opening faceoff to set up Joseph Stock for a shot. The initial attempt was denied but Joe Coburn followed on the rebound to stuff it home.

Forty seconds later, Stock finished what he started with some savvy stickwork to shred the Titans defensemen and score for a 4-0 lead.

This is really when the running clock came into play as the Alumni started fading and the Titans started taking over. Most of the play happened in the Alumni zone with the Titans circling the net to mount a late game comeback. They scored midway through the third period and tacked on a second goal when Grady Dietrich scored off an assist from Vojta Jirka but with the clock running, time ran out on a Titan comeback as the Alumni held on for the 4-2 win.