The Lehigh Valley Phantoms, an affiliate of the Philadelphia Flyers, beat the Charlotte Checkers, an affiliate of the Carolina Hurricanes, 2-1 in the longest game in AHL history Wednesday night.
DAVID GREENE, HOST:
All right, we’re going to turn now to quite a moment in sports. There is a reason people call playoff hockey the most grueling two months in sports. It is fast. It is physical. It is long.
RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Right, but not usually this long. The Lehigh Valley Phantoms and Charlotte Checkers, minor American Hockey League teams, played a game that went into five overtimes.
GREENE: Five overtimes. Yes, the players were still on the ice after six hours, when finally…
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BOB ROTRUCK: Bardreau out in front – (yelling) goal – a goal. Bardreau over Krushelnyski. Alex Krushelnyski scores the winning goal in the fifth overtime, that goal coming 6:48 into the fifth overtime in the longest game in American Hockey League history.
(LAUGHTER)
MARTIN: That guy seems psyched. So that goal for the Phantoms came at 1:10 in the morning. The Phantom’s team captain, Colin McDonald, says both teams were pretty banged up by the end.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
COLIN MCDONALD: The emotions right now – I mean, that’s almost three full hockey games in one. Like, its just – I’m really proud of the guys and the way they obviously dug deep and found a way to get it done.
GREENE: Yeah, a lot of fans were tweeting that the real hero last night was the Phantoms goalie Alex Lyon. He made 94 saves.
MARTIN: Wow. And when the guy who scored the winning goal, Krushelnyski, was asked what he was most looking forward to after this victory. His answer – bed. Don’t blame him. The next game in the quarterfinal series is Saturday night.
(SOUNDBITE OF LETTUCE’S “GET GREASY”)
Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
