4. Hockey: Detroit Red Wings vs. Montreal Maroons
Hockey games usually avoid turning into marathon competitions, because depending on the league, games either resort to a shootout after an overtime period or just end in a draw. This is the case in the NHL, save for one key exception: the Stanley Cup Playoffs. During the postseason, games will continue to go into 20-minute overtime periods until a goal is scored in open play. This has made for some epic contests over the years, the most famous of which took place in a 1936 semifinal game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Maroons. After three 20-minute periods of regulation play, neither team had managed to find a goal, so the game went into overtime. The defensive struggle continued, and the players managed to go scoreless for five full 20-minute periods of overtime. Both teams were nearly dead on their feet when Detroit’s Mud Bruneteau, a rookie who’d only been playing professionally for two weeks, scored a miracle goal 16 minutes into the sixth overtime. When all was said and done, the total game time was 176 minutes, 116 of it overtime—that’s nearly the equivalent of three back-to-back-to-back games.