The Philadelphia Flyers haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1975 but the Moosomin, Sask., version hopes to set a world record next month.
Dressed in the NHL team’s colours, the white “Flyers” and the orange “Flyers” plan to play hockey for a continuous 25 hours starting at 11 p.m. Friday, Nov. 23.
The fake Flyers are in reality the Moosomin Moose Hockey Team, which, with some neighbourhood recruits, wants to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records when it skates off the ice in the early morning of Nov. 25.
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“You sign a contract with them (Guinness) and they reserve the right to send an anonymous observer,” said Mike Schwean, project manager and hockey player.
The longest official hockey game is 18 hours and some minutes, he said, although there are non-official games that went 22-23 hours.
It’s all being done to raise money for the town’s planned nursing home-hospital facility. The $20 million provincial government project requires a certain amount of local fundraising. Schwean said individual and local business pledges the team has collected will pay for beds as well as construction costs.
The idea for a hockey game record started a couple of years ago in the dressing room of the Moose team. Originally the players had aimed at making $10,000 but “if we don’t raise $25,000 we’ll be disappointed,” said Schwean.
The 18 men on the team, aged 25-40, recruited 22 others so that the 40 players will be on the ice about six hours each throughout the weekend. Schwean said the hardest part will be sitting on the bench, not playing.
The team also hopes to set another world record for the highest scoring game. It is part of the fundraising effort as well with a raffle to guess the final score.
And if Moosomin gets tired of hockey, it can turn to football on TV since that is also Grey Cup weekend.
