By TRT Staff with notes from NHL.com
FLORIDA — Leading all players with 57:56 of ice time during a 3-2 quadruple overtime win against the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final at PNC Arena on Thursday, Brandon Montour broke a new single-game record.
Montour, who notched a career-high 73 points (16 goals, 57 assists) in 2022-23, passed the 50-minute mark.
By the time Matthew Tkachuk beat Frederik Andersen with 12.7 seconds left in the fourth overtime to cap off the the sixth-longest game in NHL history, Montour’s monster minutes had set a new single-game franchise record and is the ninth-most in the NHL since 1997-98.
In addition to Montour, four other players also surpassed the 50-minute mark in Game 1, including defensemen Gustav Forsling (55:41) and Aaron Ekblad (52:10) for the Panthers, and defenseman Brent Burns (54:43) and Jaccob Slavin (51:41) for the Hurricanes.
According to NHL Edge, going by distance, Montour skated roughly 8.85 miles. Oddly enough, this isn’t the longest game Montour has ever played in.
All the way back on March 6, 2015, Montour, a freshman in college, manned the blue line for UMass over the course of five overtimes during an eventual 4-3 win over Notre Dame, which lasted an NCAA record 151 minutes and 42 seconds.
Looking to snatch another game from the Hurricanes on the road in Game 2 on Saturday, Montour and the rest of the Panthers feel they’ll be ready to go again after a good day of recovery on Friday.
