Emotional moment concludes World’s Longest Hockey Game

Team Hope defeats Team Cure in record-setting 252-hour game

EDMONTON - There’s no crying in hockey.

But there were frozen tears on the faces of several of the players on the ice when a woman was given a microphone outside the bubble at the World’s Longest Hockey Game to speak to them on a loudspeaker while they played on and on and on.

That moment trumped all others at the most memorable edition of the seventh edition of the event.

It ended Monday with Team Hope defeating Team Cure 2,649 to 2,528 despite being outshot 10,253 to 9,996 in setting a new Guinness World Book of Records mark of 252 hours.

The players overcame not only the physical challenges of holding it during a coronavirus pandemic with players isolating in trailers when they weren’t on the ice. And in the end, they all took the ice as fireworks were sent into the still-dark sky with next no witnesses for a short ceremony and combined team picture, social distancing be dammed.

The indelible memory wasn’t the insane cold that resulted in a hundred pucks “exploding” when they hit a goal post.

It wasn’t the record $1,573,609 raised in donations or half the $399,165 raised by Edmonton EE 50-50.

It was the moment late in the week when Jodi Parent stepped to the mic and her first words on the loudspeaker had everybody’s attention.

“My son Cole would have been 17 years old today,” she told the players who skated without spectators this year. “He died at age eight because of brain cancer.”

Jodi then spoke of how she herself has been diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer. She had come to thank the players for giving her hope by raising money so she could be part of a clinical trial at the University of Alberta.

If the game hadn’t been held, and it didn’t look like it would for significant stretches there, she’d have lost her last hope.

“I was having a tough shift,” said Scott Bentley, a veteran playing in his third World’s Longest Game.

“It was a 5 a.m., shift and nothing was working. My swollen ankles were nagging me to stop and the wind seemed to have a new strategy through my gear.

“My legs were heavy and my mind was contemplating ‘poor me’ thoughts. On the sixth hour of my shift I was grinding along when the music stopped. It was a blonde lady holding a framed picture.

“We always keep playing so I only saw her as I skated to get the puck. But I could hear her story.

“The tears started to seep into my balaclava. She told us of her son’s love for hockey and how she had already received treatment and a mastectomy. She told us she was so thankful to us for being out there because she was one of the candidates to take part in the trials for a new drug that we are raising money for this year.

“I was sobbing uncontrollably as I fumbled around the ice,” said Bentley. “My balaclava, now soaked, was pushing tears back up my face.

“She told us one other thing. If they hadn’t managed to get this game on the ice this year because of COVID-19, she knew she’d be dead by next year and wouldn’t have the chance to be a candidate for the test group.”

Bentley, who played his first in 2008, said he returned this year because he considered this year special.

“This year the cancer drug developed by the University of Alberta that we’ve been raising money for actually cures lymphoma. Every dollar raised goes for the first human trials ever for this drug that, from early animal testing, has cured cancer, period. That’s freaking special. I got to be a tiny part of something that might save someone else’s mom one day,” said the player who lost his mom to cancer when he was 20.