The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Third period surge seals the deal
By Than Acuff
Despite being in the driver’s seat for most of the game, it wasn’t until a five-goal third period that the Crested Butte Titans hockey team skated away with a 7-1 win over the Caprock Academy Eagles on Friday, January 23.
The Eagles took down the Titans earlier in the season 4-2 but since that game, Crested Butte had grown leaps and bounds winning four of their last six games, with the only losses coming to the top 4A team in the state, and the team appearing to be clicking on all three lines and goalie Ryder Church establishing himself as one of the best goalies in the state.
“There’s a sense of buying in,” says coach Paul O’Connor. “There’s a sense of community and buying into what we’re telling them and they’re putting together some good periods.”
Case in point, the first period against Caprock. With Church coming up with big saves when needed and all three lines setting the tone with puck pressure and hustle, Crested Butte had the Eagles off-balance all period long and created a handful of additional powerplays. Caprock’s goalie proved equally solid in net to hold off Crested Butte’s barrage of shots, but the Titans eventually broke the seal in the 15th minute of the first period. After getting shut down in close, the Titans looked from afar to score as Colby Wark dropped the puck to Floyd Sedunov at the point and Sedunov fired a low wrist shot through traffic to beat the Caprock goalie for a 1-0 lead.
“We had to figure out how to beat their goalie,” says O’Connor.
Caprock opened the second period on a powerplay, and Church came through again with three successive saves to help kill the penalty. But Caprock had found some momentum in their efforts and would eventually tie the game in the fourth minute of the second period. This is where the Titans have showed their new colors the past several games though as they came right back on the front foot following the goal. The first line almost responded immediately on their first shift and the second line seized on the energy as Ethan Suazo picked off a pass by a Caprock defenseman and scored for a 2-1 Titans lead.
“Once again the team responded…”
But the Eagles weren’t giving up easily and the two teams traded off several scoring chances throughout the rest of the second period with Church coming up big again and again to help Crested Butte hold onto their 2-1 lead heading into the third period.
“We just told them that we think we’re better than them so go out and show them,” says O’Connor.
This is when the Titans talent on all three lines and crafty game management by the coaches has started to pay off recently in the third period of games. Crested Butte opened the third on a powerplay and while they couldn’t capitalize then, their effort paid off not long after as Cole Hawley moved the puck across to Mason Crist in the Titans defensive zone and Crist sent a long diagonal pass to Suazo behind the Caprock defensemen and Suazo skated to net to score his second goal of the game.
Continued effort by the entire Titans team kept the Eagles off balance and Crested Butte struck a fourth time when Jackson Moore chased a puck down in the corner to feed Kaiden Bartelli in the slot for him to score and take a 4-1 lead.
Four minutes later the floodgates officially opened up starting with Jonah Zobs’ first goal of the season. After providing steady defense as a second line defenseman, Zobs got into the scoring end of things when heavy forechecking by the Titans spat the puck out to the point and Zobs drilled a slapshot from distance for a 5-1 lead. Thirty seconds later Max Dukeman tipped in a shot by Wark and 20 seconds later Moore set up Bartelli a second time to finish off the 7-1 win.
“We started going back to the point more and a lot of our goals came from there,” says O’Connor. “We’ve worked a lot on that and they’re slowly getting smarter and it’s fun to see. We got good, hard play from all of our lines and the third- and fourth-line players are getting us pucks, getting us chances and getting the older guys more rest. Everybody played a great game, the effort was there.”
Crested Butte hits the road this weekend for a game in Durango on Friday, January 30, in Glenwood Springs on Saturday and then closes out the regular season with two home games the second week of February.
“Hopefully we can bring home some good news,” says O’Connor. “We have to learn in the next three to four games how to start off games playing the way we play rather than reacting to our opponent.”
