So you think that you have seen some long overtime games this spring? The one between Detroit and Pittsburgh in game 5 lasted for five and half periods and took some four and a half hours to complete. But it was still a quickie compared to the real epic from March 24, 1936. The mother of all overtime games took almost nine (!) periods, nearly three full games in one swing.  

A couple of days following the Detroit Red Wings 11th Stanley Cup win, it may be  fitting to rewind 72 years to 1936 when the Red Wings won their first cup. It certainly didn’t come easy. In those days, a team needed to win only two best-of-five series to take home the cup. But for the Wings, it still was an ordeal; this due to the very first playoff game which seemed that it would last forever.

At Montreal’s famous Forum on March 24 and into the wee hours of March 25, 1936, the Detroit Red Wings and Montreal Maroons played a triple-header, nearly three full games, in the first match of their best-of-five semi-final playoff series.

It’s more than 72 years ago when Modère “Mud” Bruneteau scored the game's only goal, lashing the Red Wings' 67th shot past Maroons goaltender Lorne Chabot at 16:30 of the sixth overtime period. The teams had played 116 minutes, 30 seconds of extra time, 176:30 including 60 minutes of regulation, to decide the longest game in NHL history.

In the other crease, Detroit's Normie Smith was numb, unbeaten by 90 Maroons shots. He hadn't lost 12 pounds through perspiration; he merely had transferred the weight to his saturated peak-cap, long-johns and leather goal pads that were stuffed with soggy horsehair.

This is how legendary Montreal Herald reporter Elmer Ferguson described the goal in his game story the following day:

At twenty-five minutes past two this morning, a bushy-haired blonde veteran of hockey, Hector Kilrea, a sturdy, scarlet-clad form wearing the white emblem of Detroit Red Wings, went pounding tirelessly down the battle-scarred, deep-cut Forum ice, trying to pilot a puck that was bobbling crazily over the rough trail, almost out of control.

It looked like another of the endless unfinished plays - when suddenly, in shot the slim form of a player, who through this long, weary tide of battle that ebbed and flowed had been almost unnoticed. He swung his stick at the bobbling puck, the little black disc straightened away, shot over the foot of Lorne Chabot, bit deeply into the twine of the Montreal Maroon cage.

And so Modère Bruneteau, clerk in a Winnipeg grain office, leaped to fame as the player who ended the longest game on professional hockey record.

This record will be as hard to beat as Wayne Gretzky’s 92 goals in one season or goaltender Glenn Hall’s 502 consecutive league games or the Soviet Union’s nine consecutive World Championship titles.  


Mud Bruneteau looking at a picture of himself in a Red Wing uniform with the original caption underneath the photo: Scorer of the only goal in the longest game in National Hockey League history. His name was Mud. Photo: HHoF/Richard Bak

Until that night, the longest game on record had been played on April 3, 1933, in Toronto, going 104 minutes and 46 seconds into overtime. The Maple Leafs' Ken (Cagey) Doraty finally scored to defeat Boston 1-0.

The NHL was an eight-team league in 1935-36, four clubs in both the Canadian and American divisions. The Montreal Canadiens, who late in the season had traded goalie Lorne Chabot to the Maroons for three players, including a rookie winger named Toe Blake, were on the outside looking in as the playoffs began. They had finished in the Canadian cellar with 11 victories in 48 games.

The Maroons were the defending Stanley Cup champions, and in the opinion of Montreal's English newspapers - The Gazette, the Star, and the best sports page in town, the Herald - they were a clinch to repeat. Their first post-season test would be the Red Wings, champions of the American Division.

The series opened at the Forum at 8:30 p.m. on Tuesday, March 24, before a crowd estimated at 9,000, a thousand less than capacity. With two friends, Val Traversy and Herbie Howe, Phil Caddell walked to the arena from National Breweries, where he worked as a junior clerk earning $40 a month.

“There were tickets galore. We just walked up and bought 'em at a window on the sidewalk, and I'd be surprised if we spent more than 50 cents for our (unreserved) rush-end seats,'' says Phil Caddell, who was 22 and who lived to tell this story in 1999 when the Montreal Gazette reconstructed the historic battle through his eyes.

“We just went to see three periods of hockey. How could we possibly know we'd get nine?”

While the game forever will be remembered as the one “when Bruneteau finally scored”, Detroit goalie Normie Smith was as much a hero as the forward who sent the fans home at 2:25am.
 
Smith broke into the NHL with the Maroons in 1931, playing 20 games before he was accidentally crushed by then-teammate Howie Morenz in a goalmouth scramble and sidelined for the season. He languished in the minors for two years and took to wearing a peaked cap, which he found cut the glare from the overhead lights. In 1934, he was signed by Detroit manager and coach Jack Adams.

Not only did Smith shut out the Maroons over nearly nine periods of this incredible game, he blanked them again in Game 2 and wasn't beaten until 12:02 of the first period of Game 3, giving him a shutout streak of 248:32, which remains an NHL record. The Wings swept the Maroons and then beat Toronto in the final to win their first of two consecutive Stanley Cups.

Smith's 90 saves in one game (92, according to some reports) are listed in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Wilfred Kennedy (Bucko) McDonald, a beefsteak-and-potatoes man of 205 pounds, earned his pay and more on this night. Renowned for his physical style, a Red Wings fan offered him $5 for every Maroon he levelled. Nine periods and 37 punishing bodychecks later, the fan happily forked over $185, enough to buy Bucko a few prime sirloins. Remember, these were they days when hockey players didn’t make fortunes.

The Maroons' Joe Lamb didn't see action until the "second'' game. He later told reporters: "After this, I'm going to have my steak at around 8 o'clock instead of 3 in the afternoon!''

Published reports vary on how many spectators were left at the end, but Caddell, who finally was awakened by the cheers – "It was more a sigh of relief,'' one columnist wrote – recalls having enough room to stretch out on his rush-end bench.

The girls working the refreshment booths on the promenade deck, who usually would close up shop by 10pm, were still serving cakes and coffee four hours later.

During intermissions, players were sipping tea and coffee laced with brandy, then lying on their backs with their legs up on benches to improve circulation. The two referees, Ag Smith and Bill Stewart (the latter the grandfather of modern-time NHL official Paul Stewart), stopped taking their skates off, afraid they wouldn't be able to lace up their boots over surely swollen feet.

Finally, at 2:25am, a 21-year-old rookie from St. Boniface, Manitoba, played the hero. The following morning, Maroons’ goalie Lorne Chabot presented right-winger Mud Bruneteau with the puck that ended the game.

"Gee whiz, gee whiz, that's swell,'' an overwhelmed Mud told reporters as he twirled the prize in his hands.


The puck with which Mud Bruneteau ended the longest game is on display at the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Photo: HHoF
    
Mud Bruneteau, a Winnipeg grain-commissions clerk for Montreal-born Red Wings owner James Norris, died April 15, 1982. He is exclusively celebrated for the historic overtime goal he scored in his first-ever playoff game, which while understandable, is also a disservice to his contribution to hockey.

Bruneteau played 11 seasons for Detroit, scoring 162 goals in 488 games. He went down to the Red Wings' farm club in Omaha in 1946-47 and retired to coach the Knights in 1948-49, handpicked by Jack Adams to nurture the next generation of Wings. That season, he became the first professional coach of Terry Sawchuk, one of the greatest goalies of all time.

A gifted, patient communicator, Bruneteau taught the young Sawchuk the finer points of the position, and Sawchuk, a future Hall of Famer, frequently credited his coach for his development.

Mud Bruneteau scored once more in the playoff season of 1935-36, and his name is engraved on the Stanley Cup three times. He ended the game at 2:25 in the morning of March 25, 1936, but the memory of this battle will last for ever.

While this was Detroit’s first of now eleven Stanley Cups, the Maroons never won more than the two they previously had captured, in 1926 and in 1935. The team of the English speaking Montrealers withdrew from the league after the 1937-38 season due to financial problems, never to return.

– with kind permission from the Montreal Gazette & staff writer Dave Stubbs – www.canada.com/montrealgazette & www.habsinsideout.com