As the Flyers celebrated their 50th season as a club, this year was one that provided fans plenty of opportunities to look back on seminal moments in team history. No stone was left unturned, as the team celebrated every step that got them where they are today.
It may seem hard to believe, but one of those seminal moments took place 17 years ago today. On this day in 2000, Keith Primeau brought an end to the longest game of the NHL's modern era, as the Flyers took down the Pittsburgh Penguins in the fifth overtime of Game 4 of the Second Round.
NHL.com deputy managing editor Adam Kimelman — one of the more underrated writers covering the Orange and Black — has an excellent look at what went into that game, and how that goal was scored. Speaking with a few players from the Flyers and Penguins, Kimelman provides a thorough, in-depth oral history.
Kimelman also spoke with Rob Shick, the referee for that night's contest. Shick was hoping the game would be done in quick order, but he got quite a bit more than he bargained for:
"As an official you always hope [overtime is] quick and clean. The quicker, the cleaner, the better off it is."
As the game continued, the Flyers and Penguins found themselves running on fumes. Food that was to be used for the players was quickly running low, and as goalie Brian Boucher recalled, that exhaustion was continuing to mount:
"The fourth overtime is when things started to come unglued a little bit in the locker room. We went through all the pizza that was waiting for us, that was gone. We had gone through all the power bars, all the granola bars, all the power gels. There were guys like Keith Jones and Craig Berube, they were tapped out. Those guys are real funny guys. Jonesy came in and was like, "Somebody end this thing please." He was done. He was playing on one leg."
Keith Jones found himself unable to stay on the ice too long, having to scurry back to the bench in pretty quick order:
"I jumped over the boards, took a couple steps, stopped, went back toward our end, got midway between the red line and blue line and said "Change" and climbed back over the bench."
Primeau, who had just seven playoff goals to his name at that point in his career, ultimately proved to be the hero. He carried the puck along the half-wall, cut over to the circle to shake off Darius Kasparaitis, and hammered a wrister that beat Ron Tugnutt to the short side under the crossbar:
"Two times earlier in the game [Penguins defenseman Darius] Kasparaitis, I had taken him wide. One time I circled around the net, once he met me at the far post. I was never able to get a step on him. Then in overtime I faked like I was going to go outside on him again, I cut back to the middle and got a shot off. Wasn't a great shot but at that point it was just put it on net."
The fact that Jim Jackson still had enough energy left for a thrilling goal call like that still impresses me to this day. Exhaustion wasn't just present on the ice — it carried over to the press box and announcer booths too, as demonstrated by Gary Dornhoefer's exasperated "thank goodness it's over!"
After eight periods (nearly the equivalent of three full games!), 152:01 of game time and copious amounts of pizza slices and energy bars later, the Flyers were winners, and sent the series back to Philadelphia even at two games apiece. The game had started around 7:30 p.m., and didn't wrap up until around 2:35 — a seven-hour demonstration of why there is nothing else in sports like playoff hockey.
Kimelman's whole story over at NHL.com is well worth the read. It's certainly not one of the prettiest games in Flyers history, but it's one of the most interesting.
[H/T NHL.com]
