World’s Longest Hockey Game looks to set record east of Sherwood Park

Imagine playing an entire NHL season worth of hockey in just one day. Seems like quite the feat but that’s exactly what 40 competitors started Friday morning in a charity hockey game.  The proceeds will go to PROFYLE, a new initiative started by the Terry Fox Foundation.

The World’s Longest Hockey Game is hosted by Dr. Brent Saik, the former optometrist for the Edmonton Oilers. The game first started when Saik’s father was dying of cancer and was being treated at the Cross Cancer Institute.

“The game started when my dad he was dying of cancer and as that was happening he was going to the Cross and he wanted to keep kids out of the Cross Cancer Institute so he said try to do something through your life to try and keep kids outta here.”

It wasn’t always a hockey game, however. Saik tried a baseball game and golf tournament but it was Saik’s wife who had the idea for a hockey game. “I never played hockey and my wife said ‘Well build a hockey rink and learn to play hockey’ and all of a sudden we’re gonna play hockey for the world record.”

Saik’s wife passed away after the inaugural game, but the game is still going strong and Saik says it has become somewhat of a family tradition.

This year’s donations will be going to a project called PROFYLE, a program that helps genetically identify what type of cancer a child has in order to be able to treat it. The Terry Fox Foundation started the program on November 23, 2017, and the cost is not cheap.

• PROFYLE costs $22 million nationwide to run
• Alberta’s portion of this is $2 million
• There are currently more than 30 patients across Canada
• There are plans to enroll over 450 patients in the next four years

Saik hopes the event will raise enough money to cover Alberta’s costs for the program alone and also take the title of the World’s Longest Hockey Game back from a Buffalo group that currently holds it.

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