Remembering the longest NHL game ever played

On this day in 1936, the Montreal Maroons and Detroit Red Wings squared off in what remains the longest game in NHL history:

Mud Bruneteau sent more than 9,000 fans at the Montreal Forum home disappointed - not to mention numbingly exhausted - when he batted a rolling puck past Maroons netminder Lorne Chabot at 16:30 of the sixth overtime period to give the Red Wings a 1-0 victory. The win also put Detroit ahead 1-0 in the best-of-five semifinal.

Montreal Herald reporter Elmer Ferguson succinctly describes the winning play here:

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

Chabot made the lone mistake on a night that featured the most impressive goaltending duel in history. The Montreal veteran finished with 66 saves while his counterpart, Detroit's Norm Smith, turned aside all 90 (!) shots he faced to set a league mark for saves in a game previously held by Chabot.

The Red Wings ended up sweeping the Canadiens, while Smith extended his shutout streak to an NHL-record 248 minutes, 32 seconds in the process. Detroit went on to win the Stanley Cup that season, the first in franchise history.

Here's a look at the 10 longest games in NHL history: