With the prospects for major league hockey quickly fading, a group of amateurs are cramming an NHL-season's worth of stickhandling into what they hope will be a record-setting ten days.
The players took to the ice in Sherwood Park, Alberta on Friday, with the intention of playing the world's longest game of hockey.
As organizer Brent Saik explains, that means "240 hours of hockey, forty guys, and one goal."
To break the record in ten consecutive days also means skating in all kinds of weather, in 10-hour shifts -- day and night -- as the growing score is tracked by pencil and paper.
While the outdoor rink lacks most of the trappings associated with the professional game, Saik concedes his players do have something in common with their locked-out counterparts.
They love hockey, but are playing this game for money.
But the dollar figures Saik's players are dreaming about aren't contained in salaries or schemes to ensure "cost certainty" -- they're raising money for pediatric cancer research.
For many, it's personal. Saik, for example, lost both his father and wife to cancer.
But if player Jason Gregor is right, the fun he and his colleagues are having on the ice might provide others a small reminder of the "goodness of hockey."
"I think the sad thing about hockey, it might be tainted because of the lockout," Gregor told CTV News.
For player Roman Korol, the cause is good and the game is still great.
"I love this game. My feet don't love it no more -- I can't feel my legs -- but it's fun."
The current record longest game -- 203 hours -- was played by a group in Sudbury, Ontario, last year. The year before, Saik and his friends established the record with an 82-hour game
