World's Longest Hockey Game Is One For the Books

Recently, 40 brave Albertans played a 252-hour long hockey match to raise money for cancer patients, and their efforts likely broke a world record. The World's Longest Hockey Game, an annual event now in its seventh year, was started by Brent Saik, who owns Alberta Sports Vision Institute.

Siak lost his father to cancer in 2014, so this one hits close to home.

"The Alberta government were awesome in helping me and explaining to me how it would be possible," Saik told CTV News Channel about receiving an exception to play the game despite regulations. "We had to do an incredible amount of things to make that work."

After the 252-hour game, Team Hope bested Team Care 2,649 to 2,528, which is still probably better defense than a typical NBA game. The two teams also managed to rack in $1.84 million in charity donations, which is what really counts.

As you can imagine, the temperatures for this game were miserable, but Brent Saik offered a heartwarming response to the frigid conditions:

"This was a piece of cake," Saik told CTV News. "Our conditions were fine. Our prayers are for people. Their conditions are a lot worse than what we went through and that's why we do this."

Don't we wish all professional athletes had this mindset during the pandemic? It sets the tone for hope.

Donations

An anonymous donor decided to match donations this year up to $100,000, and the Edmonton Football Club also donated half of the proceeds of a 50/50 drawing that was held at the event. Most of the fundraising for this year's event will support a clinical trial of a new cancer treatment called PCLX-001, which aims at treating blood cancers.

Bravo, all around.