Former NHL player Janne Niinimaa participates in The World's Longest Hockey Game in Sherwood Park, Alta., on Monday.Amber Bracken/The Globe and Mail
On the western fringe of Sherwood Park, Alta., in a place dubbed Saiker's Acres, the score is 841 to 806 for Team Hope over Team Cure and it's only Tuesday morning.
That means there are still six days and 1,000-plus goals to be scored before someone blows the whistle on the World's Longest Hockey Game. By then, the 40 players, the many referees, scorekeepers, volunteers and some occasional fans will have earned their entry in Guinness World Records for staging the longest outdoor hockey game ever played – about 10 days.
More important, the game is attempting to raise $2-million for the Alberta Cancer Foundation, which will use the money to buy a new PET-MR diagnostic scanner for Edmonton's Cross Cancer Institute.
That's the plan for this fifth marathon on ice. The trick is playing hockey when it's 2 a.m. and the temperature drops, cold winds blow and the biggest worry isn't being down by 35 goals, it's about getting the circulation back in your feet.
"In 2008, it went down to minus-50 and we lost four guys to frostbite," said Kevin Karius, who spoke from inside the new dressing-room/lounge facility built at rinkside. "Could we have made a trade with the other team? That would have been great, but we can't make changes because you have to go by the Guinness Book rules."
Under Guinness regulations, the players can't leave the site; they stay in their motorhomes trying to catch up on sleep when not on the ice. The teams must have 20 players per side and rotate their lineup so that everyone gets more ice time than what Los Angeles Kings' defenceman Drew Doughty sees in a week. Or two weeks if his coach is mad at him.
The fun part of this round-the-clock game is that it has made for some odd moments and a lot of laughs. It's commonplace to hear players praising their goaltender by saying, "He only gave up 50 goals that shift." Soon enough, we're bound to hear such classic hockey jargon as, "We're taking it one four-hour shift at a time." And, "The plan is to wear them down by Thursday."
For Brent Saik, the owner of Saiker's Acres and an optometrist by trade, the World's Longest Hockey Game has been his vision dating back to 2003. That first game lasted 82 hours and raised $80,000. Since then, the games have been played at least a couple of years apart so the players can rest and thaw out in time for the next one.
"This has become a part of my family," said Dr. Saik, who lost both his wife and his father to cancer. The second Longest Game, played in 2005, was dedicated to Susan Saik.
"I've talked to people who tell me about losing someone to cancer. Those stories I hear keep me going. It's why we're all doing this."
Dr. Saik is the optometrist for the Edmonton Oilers. Of all the players he's seen over the years, he has struck a close friendship with former NHL defenceman Janne Niinimaa, who spent six seasons with the Oilers and cried when he was traded away in 2003.
Mr. Niinimaa now works out of Helsinki as a commentator on Finnish hockey broadcasts. He promised he would one day play in Dr. Saik's fundraiser. True to his word, Mr. Niinimaa, in a red Team Hope jersey with No. 6 on it, was skating around the ice on a chilly Alberta afternoon remembering his childhood. He grew up in northern Finland and played outdoors on Jaali Lake. The games would start even if the lake wasn't completely frozen over.
"We'd send the smallest kid to get the puck if it got too close to the water," Mr. Niinimaa said. "At night, the parents would park their cars near the water and turn their lights on so we could keep playing."
Before the Longest Game began last Friday, Mr. Niinimaa talked to the players from both teams, telling them that even though he had played in a number of meaningful games, from the world juniors to the Winter Olympics to the Stanley Cup playoffs, playing outdoors in Edmonton for such a worthy cause was going to be "one of the best experiences of my life."
As proof, players and organizers were shown just how vital their efforts have been. Brendan O'Callaghan stopped by the other day to watch some of the action. He had been diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia and benefited from the money raised by many of these same hockey players. He was treated with aggressive chemotherapy and has been cancer-free for nearly eight years.
Seeing him come to the Longest Game at Saiker's Acres was all the inspiration the players needed to keep going and going. As one player, Jouni Nieminen, wrote on his page on the Longest Game website, "I have never been on an uglier team or played for a more beautiful cause."