WORLD’S LONGEST HOCKEY GAME STILL RESONATES
Sixth edition of 251-hour ice marathon raises $1.1 million for cancer research
The worry was that the World’s Longest Hockey Game might be getting stale.
How many times could they go back to Saiker’s Acres and do it again?
For the sixth time, 40 players and 700 volunteers returned to Brent Saik’s outdoor rink and complex, built especially to host the event 20 kilometres east of Sherwood Park, and did it again.
When they’d reclaimed their Guinness Book of World Records title with a time of 251 hours and nine minutes shortly after 7 p.m. Monday, the donations for cancer research had passed $1.1 million and the six-year total had passed $4.4 million. And those numbers will go up.
“Sunday there was $60,000 or $70,000 that people just walked up and donated. That hasn’t been added to the totals yet. And a lot of the players have dollars-per-goal pledges,” he said of guys like TSN 1260’s Dustin Neilson, who passed the 300-goal plateau and $40,000 mark Monday.
When the game came to an end, five players had completed the ordeal for a sixth time: Darcy Humeniuk, Randy Allen, Curtis Sieben, Jouni Nieminen and Saik.
For Nieminen, a hockey-writing foreign correspondent from Finland, he was the oldest player in the game at 56 and retired on the spot.
“I decided not to pull a Vesa Toskala, get drunk and then burn my hockey gear in the parking lot of the rink. That’s the Finnish way of announcing retirement.
“I think there’s going to be quite a few retirements. I’m going to be one of them. It’s been awesome. It’s been wonderful. I never thought that a guy from the wrong side of Helsinki would play in such an important game in Canada. It’s been an absolutely amazing experience.”
Every edition is different. Every edition is the same.
“I think it was a little colder overall than usual,” said Nieminen. “One night it went down to minus 40 C with the wind chill and guys were putting Vaseline and bees wax on their face and putting duct tape on their nose, which was hilarious.
“You see some pretty strange sights in the middle of those nights. There were more strange sights this year than normal,” he said including the loss of electricity one night and everybody not playing using their cellphone lights to shine on the ice until it returned.
“It was so windy some nights that some guys put ski glasses on. One day it was raining and the ice got all sticky. We had a lot of injuries, too. Randy Allen has cracked ribs. We’ve had to put him away a couple of times for a day or so,” he said of one member of the Fabulous Five who have played in all six editions.
“Kevin Karius played with a pulled bicep,” he said of the Global sportscaster. “There’s a separated shoulder out there somewhere. And there’s some terrible-looking feet.” Nieminen was the first injury. “On the very first shift of the game I was skating backwards and my skate blade hit a rut. I knew in the air while I was flying that ‘This one is going to hurt.’
“They had to put me through the concussion protocol. It was like I was playing with a knife in my back every day. It’s been hurting like hell for me since the very first shift. This one has been the most painful one for me personally.”
As a Canadian-based hockey writer, Nieminen is around NHL players all the time. But he said this was a special year for surprise visits.
“We had Pat Hughes, Mike Krushelnyski, Glenn Anderson and Don Jackson come out when the ‘Greatest Team’ celebrations were here. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins showed up the other day. Early in the week, before they went on the road, we got Connor McDavid and Darnell Nurse,” said Nieminen.
“I enjoyed McDavid’s visit the most. They all seemed to enjoy hanging out in the dressing room, but Connor was actually watching the game. He wanted to come. And when he got here that guy was all hockey. I couldn’t help but laugh. The best hockey player in the world was watching the worst hockey players in the world.”
Oilers head coach Todd McLellan and senior vicepresident of hockey operations Craig MacTavish paid a visit on Sunday.
At the end of it all, there was no doubt that the event has yet to get stale or run its course.
There will be a seventh maybe three years from now.
“There was no indication of this losing its lustre at all,” said Saik, the Oilers and Eskimos optometrist of the past 22 years.
“People are wondering when we’ll have it again. We’ll have it again. We have a board where we write down things we can add or improve for the next one. We’ll have another one.
Saik said he’s ready to sign himself up for it.
“I feel good. I was lucky this year. I didn’t get injured. Everybody finished the game this year,” he said.
“Nobody had to go to the hospital. We had lots of little things. Broken ribs. Torn biceps. Some really bad hamstring injuries. Blisters and stuff. But those aren’t really injuries. Those are just the nature of the beast.”