Boucher sees marathon 20 years after 5OT game

Brian Boucher had a feeling by the second overtime that this game was going a while longer, and he knew from personal experience.

Twenty years ago, Boucher was in goal for the Philadelphia Flyers when they beat the Pittsburgh Penguins in the longest playoff game in modern NHL history, a fiveovertime thriller. He was between the benches Aug. 11 for NBC Sports’ television broadcast of the second-longest modern game and fourth all-time when the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Blue Jackets, 10:27, into the fifth overtime.

“It just seemed to be settling in like that,” Boucher told The Associated Press by phone Aug. 13. “You could start to see some of the players as the game wore on, they give a little chuckle to the linsemen and it almost becomes to the point where it’s fun to play in a game like that.”

Halfway through the fourthovertime,Bouchertook the kind of breath he was unable to back in 2000 and summed up what the players on the ice were feeling.

“The thing you’ve got to keepinmind,too,thephysical exertion,thecrampsthatstart to come in,” Boucher said. “It was around this time that the body started to break down.”

Brayden Point’s goal ended the Lightning-Blue Jackets game 95 seconds short of the time of Boucher’s game that finished with Keith Primeau’s wrist shot past Ron Tugnutt.

With Boucher at center ice and 2000 Flyers forward Keith Jones in the studio, the broadcast had a direct connection to the NHL’s longest game since the 1930s.

“It was so great to be able to have the bench of talent that we have that includes people like Keith Jones, who can speak to this, that includes

Brian Boucher who’s working on the game who has firsthand experience having played in a five-overtime game,” NBC Sports producer Kaitlin Urka said late Aug. 11. “That just doesn’t happen. To have two people on air tonight that couldspeaktothatinfirsthand experienceandprovidecontext in that way is just incredible.”

Boucher made 57 saves compared to Columbus goaltender Joonas Korpisalo’s Stanley Cup playoff-record 85. But from inside Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, he could describe how Korpisalo and Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy were heating up, literally.