252-hour hockey game scores records
Outdoor hockey players in Alberta break records, raise $1.8M for cancer research
SHERWOOD PARK, Alta. — The world’s longest hockey game in Alberta broke multiple records this year.
Forty people took turns playing hockey on an outdoor rink near Edmonton during record cold temperatures 24 hours a day, seven days a week since Feb. 4.
The teams, which were named Team Hope and Team Cure, hit the 252-hour mark at about 6 a.m. Monday to break their own Guinness World Record.
The final score of the game was 2,649 to 2,528 for Team Hope.
“It went amazing,” Kate Gallagher, one of the event’s organizers, said in an interview.
She said the seventh edition of the game has raised more than $1.8 million so far -higher than its $1.5 million goal -- for cancer research at the University of Alberta.
The event, which had special rules this year to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic, was first started in 2003 by eye doctor Brent Saik, who lost his father to cancer. He kept it going after his wife also died from the disease.
The game is always played on an outdoor rink on Saik’s rural property near Sherwood Park, Alta.
Players, who were in an “NHL-style bubble,” had to deal with an extreme cold weather warning that persisted for much of the 10 days.
Pucks were shattering as players passed them along the boards, skate blades broke in half, pieces of masks fell off as glue let go and goalie pads cracked in the bitter cold.
Temperatures dropped to between -40 C and -55 C with the wind chill at times.
“This was definitely the coldest game we’ve ever seen,” said Gallagher. “It was all part of the adventure.”
She said everyone powered through. “The players were troupers. They were warriors,” said Gallagher, who noted that they finished with sore bodies and blistered toes, but no major injuries.
She said the game received support from across North America this year.
“We had people watching the livestream from Florida and Michigan, and people donating from all over Canada and the U.S.”
She said she even received a call from a man in Louisiana who wants to travel across the United States and Canada with his biker friends to help raise money when there’s another game.
“The reach and the impact that the game had this year is beyond anything they’ve ever seen.”
Gallagher said fundraising is not quite finished. A silent auction is open until Friday.
“We’ve got the world’s longest game player paraphernalia,” she said.
“We’ve got the infamous shattered puck that has gone viral now, so we put that up for auction.”
There’s also a pink goalie stick, a jersey and a helmet – all of which have been signed by the players.
“We’re saying counting.”
$1.84
(million) and
WASHINGTON — After former President Donald Trump’s acquittal at his second Senate impeachment trial, bipartisan support appears to be growing for an independent Sept. 11-style commission into the deadly insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol.
Investigations into the riot were already planned, with Senate hearings scheduled later this month in the Senate Rules Committee. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has asked retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore to lead an immediate review of the Capitol’s security process.
Lawmakers from both parties, speaking on Sunday’s news shows, signalled that even more inquiries were likely. The Senate verdict Saturday, with its 57-43 majority falling 10 votes short of the twothirds needed to convict Trump, hardly put to rest the debate about the Republican former president's culpability for the Jan. 6 assault.
“There should be a complete investigation about what happened,” said Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump. “What was known, who knew it and when they knew, all that, because that builds the basis so this never happens again.”
Cassidy said he was “attempting to hold President Trump accountable,” and added that as Americans hear all the facts, “more folks will move to where I was.” He was censured by his state’s party after the vote.
An independent commission along the lines of the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks would probably require legislation to create. That would elevate the investigation a step higher, offering a definitive government-backed accounting of events. Pelosi has expressed support for such a commission while stressing that the members who sit on it would be key. Still, such a panel would pose
risks of sharpening partisan divisions or overshadowing President Joe Biden's legislative agenda.
“There's still more evidence that the American people need and deserve to hear and a 9-11 commission is a way to make sure that we secure the Capitol going forward,” said Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a Biden ally. “And that we lay bare the record of just how responsible and how abjectly violating of his constitutional oath President Trump really was.”
House prosecutors who argued for Trump’s conviction of inciting the riot said Sunday they had proved their case. They also railed against the Senate’s Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, and others who they said were “trying to have it both ways” in finding the former president not guilty but criticizing him at the same time.
A close Trump ally, Sen. Lindsey Graham, voted for acquittal but acknowledged that Trump had some culpability for the siege at
the Capitol that killed five people, including a police officer, and disrupted lawmakers’ certification of Biden's White House victory. Graham said he looked forward to campaigning with Trump in the 2022 election, when Republicans hope to regain the congressional majority.
“His behaviour after the election was over the top,” Graham said. “We need a 9-11 commission to find out what happened and make sure it never happens again.”
The Senate acquitted Trump of a charge of “incitement of insurrection” after House prosecutors laid out a case that he was an “inciter in chief,” who unleashed a mob by stoking a months-long campaign of spreading debunked conspiracy theories and false violent rhetoric that the 2020 election was stolen from him.
Trump’s lawyers countered that Trump's words were not intended to incite the violence and that impeachment was nothing but a
“witch hunt” designed to prevent him from serving in office again.
The conviction tally was the most bipartisan in American history but left Trump to declare victory and signal a political revival while a bitterly divided GOP bickered over its direction and his place in the party.
The Republicans who joined Cassidy in voting to convict were Sens. Richard Burr of North Carolina, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania.
“It’s frustrating, but the founders knew what they were doing and so we live with the system that we have,” Democratic Del. Stacey Plaskett, a House prosecutor who represents the Virgin Islands, said of the verdict, describing it as “heartbreaking.” She added: “But, listen, we didn’t need more witnesses. We needed more senators with spines.”
McConnell told Republican senators shortly before the vote that he would vote to acquit Trump. In a blistering speech after the vote, the Kentucky Republican said the president was “practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” but that the Senate’s hands were tied to do anything about it because Trump was out of office. The Senate, in an earlier vote, had deemed the trial constitutional.
“It was powerful to hear the 57 guilties and then it was puzzling to hear and see Mitch McConnell stand and say ‘not guilty’ and then, minutes later, stand again and say he was guilty of everything,” said Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa. “History will remember that statement of speaking out of two sides of his mouth,” she said.
Dean also backed the idea of an impartial investigative commission.
The lead House impeachment manager, Rep. Jamie Raskin, DMd., called the trial a “dramatic success in historical terms” by winning unprecedented support from GOP senators. He said the verdict didn’t match the reality of the strength of evidence.
“We successfully prosecuted him and convicted him in the court of public opinion and the court of history,” he said. Pointing to McConnell and other Republican senators critical of Trump but voting to acquit, Raskin said, “They’re trying to have it both ways.”
Raskin and Plaskett defended the House team’s last-minute reversal not to call a witness, Republican Rep. Jaime Herrera of Washington state.
They acknowledged they were aware they might lose some GOP votes for conviction if they extended the trial much longer.
Beutler’s statement late Friday that Trump rebuffed a plea from House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy to call off the rioters was ultimately entered into the trial record.