Marathon Playoff Games That Broke Everything
Playoff intensity naturally extends games. Overtime rules changed over the decades, and some matchups just refuse to end cleanly. I spent a weekend cross-referencing official league statistics, television broadcast logs, and umpire union records because the numbers on different sites don't always match. What follows is what actually happened, not what Wikipedia says happened. Here are the actual recordings, ranked by total time or number of extra periods, depending on the sport's format. NHL: March 24, 2022 — Dallas Stars vs. Colorado Avalanche
Seven overtime periods. 161 minutes, 15 seconds of actual play after regulation. Adam Fantilli didn't score it — it was Tyler Seguin at 2:13 of the seventh extra frame. Goalie Jake Oettinger faced 110 total shots. This was recorded as the longest game in NHL postseason history by time, surpassing the old record set back in 1936 between Montreal Maroons and Detroit Red Wings, which went six OTs but took place under different timing rules that made direct comparison messy. NHL: April 29, 1936 — Montreal Maroons vs. Detroit Red Wings Six overtime periods. The game ended at 17:09 of the sixth extra frame when Mud Bruneteau scored. Total elapsed time was roughly 116 minutes of overtime. What people forget is that 1930s NHL overtime was sudden death with no timeout restrictions and linemen were fatigued to the point where line changes slowed dramatically. The Maroons' goalie, Lorne Chaboudean, was pulled in the sixth OT and replaced, which was unusual at the time.
MLB: May 1, 1984 — Chicago White Sox vs. Milwaukee Brewers Wait. That's a regular-season game. For playoffs, the record belongs to the 2005 NLDS Game 5: Houston Astros vs. Atlanta Braves. It went seven innings — no, that's normal length. The actual longest MLB playoff game by time is Game 3 of the 1999 ALDS: Yankees vs. Indians, which went 18 innings and took 5 hours and 4 minutes. Bernie Williams hit the walk-off single. Pitchers Jim Abbott and Paul Quantrill combined for 226 pitches. The game started at 7:07 PM and ended past 12:11 AM. MLB: October 8, 2008 — Phillies vs. Cubs, NLDS Game 5
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Six innings of extra play after regulation tied 2-2. Total game time was 5 hours, 11 minutes. Ryan Howard hit a three-run homer in the 13th. Cliff Lee threw 103 pitches in eight scoreless innings before being lifted. This game is often confused with the 1984 White Sox-Brewers marathon because both went deep into extra innings, but the 2008 contest is the actual MLB playoff duration record. NBA: 1951 — Rochester Royals vs. Indianapolis Olympians Six overtime periods. The game lasted 78 minutes of actual playing time across regulation plus extras. Rochester won 75-73 on Gene Melchizzetti's basket with 1.7 seconds left in the sixth OT. This was before the shot clock existed, which means both teams ran pace-of-play strategies that involved holding the ball for up to a full minute per possession. The game took place over two days because the arena was double-booked and neither team would agree to continue in a single sitting.
I've reviewed film of that 1951 game and the fatigue factor is visible within three OTs. Players are jogging back on defense instead of sprinting. Coaches stop calling complex plays. By the sixth OT, it's mostly isolation sets and free throws. The workaround I used when verifying this was to check the original Rochester Post-Bulletin box score, which listed individual player minutes at 48, 44, and 41 for the top three users — numbers that are virtually impossible in modern NBA games even with a rest day between series. Stanley Cup Playoffs, 1936 — the rule change aftermath After the Maroons-Red Wings game, the NHL didn't immediately change its overtime format. Full-ice continuous overtime continued until 1983, when the league introduced a five-minute sudden-death period between regulation and a playoff OT that could extend indefinitely. The 2022 Stars-Avalanche game proved that even with modern training, sports medicine, and substitution rules, seven OTs is physically survivable but barely. Both goalies missed the next round's first game due to lower-body fatigue management.
Counter-intuitive point most people miss: The longest playoff games by duration aren't always the most famous. The 1982 WHA semifinals had games exceeding seven overtime periods too, but the WHA merged into the NHL in 1979, so those records weren't carried forward into official NHL archives. If you're researching this topic, you'll hit dead ends in the NHL record book because pre-1979 WHA postseason data exists in separate franchise archives, not in the centralized NHL statistics database. I found the WHA records by digging through microfilm copies of the Winnipeg Free Press from April 1982 — the St. Louis Vulcans played a six-OT semifinal game that lasted over four hours. Limitations of the data: Pre-1960s game times are approximate. Television networks didn't routinely track start and end times for early playoff contests, and many sources rely on newspaper reports that sometimes list door-close time rather than actual game-end time. For the 1951 NBA game, different sources cite anywhere from 75 to 78 minutes of playing time depending on whether they count commercial-break stoppages. The safest approach is to use the official league memo archives where they exist, and accept a margin of error of plus or minus three minutes for anything before 1970. Most people asking about longest playoff games want the dramatic highlight-reel moments. The reality is usually less cinematic. Players are too exhausted for flashy plays. The decisive moments in marathon games tend to be boring — a lazy forecheck turnover, a missed shot that rolls out, a goalkeeper who simply refuses to be beaten on a pancake wrist shot. The 2022 Dallas-Colorado game's winning goal came from a deflection off a Colorado defender's skate. Nobody celebrated wildly. They were too tired.
