Quintuple overtime hero Krushelnyski relieved to win “crazy” AHL game

Alex Krushelnyski searched for words to describe scoring in quintuple overtime, and managed to come up with “awesome” and “crazy”

What else can be said about ending an American Hockey League playoff game with a goal at 6:48 of the fifth overtime period, which gave the Lehigh Valley Phantoms a 2-1 victory over the Charlotte Checkers early Thursday morning?

“I’d say it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience but you never know,” Krushelnyski said in a phone interview. “It was wild.

“The periods just kept going on. You go into every period thinking ‘this is it’ and before you know it, it’s the fifth overtime. It was crazy.”

It was the longest game in AHL history at 146 minutes, 48 seconds and lasted more than six hours, ending at 1:09 a.m. local time. It beat the previous record set in 2008 by the Phantoms and the Albany River Rats by nearly four minutes.

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When the puck finally went into the net, with Krushelnyski beating Alex Nedeljkovic with a quick shot from the left circle, he thought “‘Oh my god, let’s go to bed.’

“It was awesome. I was just happy I could help the team win.”

While Krushelnyski was the OT hero, the star of the night was goaltender Alex Lyon, who made 94 saves against the AHL’s highest-scoring team. However, Lyon fell short of the AHL record of 98 saves set in the 2008 game by the Phantoms’ Michael Leighton in a 3-2 defeat.

Lyon’s heroics in goal gave the Phantoms confidence to go for the game-winner without worrying too much about the chances that went the other way.

“We were outshot nearly two-to-one (95-53),” said Krushelnyski. “It’s amazing when you have a goalie like that.”

The 25-year-old Lyon played 11 games for the Phantoms parent team, the Philadelphia Flyers, this season, going 4-2-1 with a 2.75 goals-against average. He is a strong candidate to play full-time in the NHL next season.

His latest performance gave him a 1.56 goals-against average and .958 save percentage in six AHL playoff games.

Krushelnyski, 27, is the son of Montreal-born Mike Krushelnyski, who won three Stanley Cups with the Edmonton Oilers in the 1980s and also played for Toronto, Detroit, Boston and Los Angeles.

The younger Krushelnyski has bounced between the AHL and ECHL since a four-year stint at Colorado College. His best previous hockey memory was scoring on a penalty shot in overtime while in college.

The victory put Lehigh Valley up 3-1 in their best-of-seven second round series against Charlotte, the Carolina Hurricanes’ farm club. They can wrap it up in Game 5 on Saturday and advance to the conference final against the Toronto Marlies, who swept the Syracuse Crunch.

Happily for both teams, there are two off-days after their eight-period marathon.

“For any team that plays a five-overtime game, it takes a lot out of you,” said Krushelnyski. “It’s nice to be on the winning side because you feel good mentally.

“Going into Saturday we’ll be pumped, with the opportunity to close out the series.”

While the game set an AHL record, it would rank fourth in the NHL, where the longest game stretched into the sixth OT before Mud Brunteau scored to give Detroit a 1-0 win over the Montreal Maroons.

Bill Beacon, The Canadian Press