Crested Butte Titans hockey finishes season with two wins

Remote shot at playoffs

By Than Acuff 

The Crested Butte Titans hockey team finished the season on a high note winning their final two games of the season starting with a 7-0 drubbing of Woodland Park on Friday, February 7 in a game where the coaching staff flipped the script moving players that hadn’t seen much time all season into shifts on the first and second lines including starting freshman JD Huresky in net.

“We knew it was a growing year for Woodland Park and they were missing some players for the game and the younger players were anointed with an enormous amount of confidence early on,” says Otsuka. 

Crested Butte jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period as Marshall Spann scored both with assists coming from Mason Weitman and Max Dukeman on the first strike and Luke Hartigan assisting Spann’s second goal.

Crested Butte netted two more early in the second period as well as Hartigan scored off Dukeman’s second assist of the game and Spann finished off the hat trick with a shorthanded goal for a 4-0 Titans’ lead after two periods of play.

Tanner Maltby, the honey badger of the team who has spent nearly every shift battling in the corners and along the boards to provide scoring chances for the team, got a chance and scored one of his own off the assist work of Carson Zummach and Floyd Sedunov. Zander Zacher and Ethan Suazo then finished it off with one goal each to cap the 7-0 Titans’ win. Huresky finished the game with 15 saves.

“It was nice to see JD get tested, and it was a good game for the younger classes,” says Otsuka. “I was pleasantly surprised by the maturity of the older group too. The players had chances to take some liberties against Woodland Park like other teams had against us earlier in the season, but the older kids didn’t let the younger guys go down that path. Win handedly but graciously.”

The Titans then headed to Glitter Gulch for their final game of the regular season to face the Aspen Leafs. It took Crested Butte until overtime to beat the Leafs earlier this year, but with their full roster now in action, Crested Butte skated to a 7-1 win over Aspen, but it wasn’t smooth sailing prior to the game with the goalie situation in flux due to illness.

“We had to make a decision during warmup and Shane (Mensing) looked the most engaged,” says Otsuka. “He was able to jump in there and definitely came through with five top tier saves.” 

Hartigan started the scoring in the first two minutes of the game scoring off an assist from Sedunov and Suazo tacked on a second goal in the 12^th minute as Matej Voldan skated his way through the Aspen team and dropped the puck to Suazo for him to pick the upper corner.

The Titans then took the bull by the horns in the second period as a flurry of Aspen penalties had Crested Butte on numerous powerplays. They kicked it off during a powerplay in the first two minutes of the period as quick passing between Voldan and Dukeman opened Jake White on the backdoor and Dukeman slipped the puck to him for White to stuff it home.

Two minutes later Dukeman scored on a rebound during another powerplay for a 4-0 Titans’ lead, but Aspen threatened on one of their powerplays only to have Mensing come up with two big saves to keep Aspen scoreless midway through the second period.

Voldan fired a one-time slapshot off a pass from Spann during another Titans’ powerplay for a 5-0 lead, but Aspen finally broke the seal on the Titans net to score in the final two minutes of the second period. Crested Butte then closed out the game in the third period with goals from Charlie Reamer and Suazo for the 7-1 win as Mensing finished with 27 saves. 

The Titans closed out the season 6-13 but winning four of their last five games with the one loss coming in overtime to the number one team in the state. It was a slow build for Crested Butte as they spent much of the first half of the season plagued with injuries. But once they got to full strength, things started clicking.

“Having healthy players is nice but it was also the cohesion from the first line to the fourth line,” explains Otsuka. “When each line understands their identity as a line and the third and fourth lines are in there creating a tornado in the offensive zone and not giving up goals, it allows line one and two to operate with a little more room and you could see their focus shifted more to about scoring. It helps when everyone is pulling on the same rope.”