When Rick Tocchet, Keith Jones and the Flyers went to Pittsburgh for Games 3 and 4 of the 2000 Eastern Conference semifinals, they ended up playing six overtimes.
Trailing in the series, 2-0, the Flyers picked up a huge Game 3 victory, needing just one overtime to beat the Penguins, 4-3. The theatrics and heroics of that outcome paled in comparison to the Flyers' historic Game 4 win, a 2-1 drainer which famously lasted five overtimes and ended at 2:35 a.m. ET.
It wasn't only six extra periods for Tocchet and Jones. On May 3, the off day between those games, Tocchet and Jones still couldn't avoid overtime.
At the movies.
The day prior, Jones had a three-point effort and an assist on the game-winning goal, while Tocchet played 21:30 minutes. In an attempt to relax prior to resting up for Game 4, Tocchet and Jones decided to catch a flick.
It was the longest movie of their lives.
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Toch and I rented a car because we wanted to go to the movies," Jones recalled during the Sports Uncovered: Marathon on Ice podcast. "And so, I go watch this entire movie, I don’t even know what movie it was. We watched the whole movie. We come back out of the movie theater, we’re like, 'Man, the car's still running.' Toch was the driver and he goes, 'Oh, that’s crazy, I think I left the keys in.' He didn’t just leave them in, we were locked out. Like it’s almost impossible to lock a car with the keys in it while it’s running.
A bad omen for Game 4? Jones said he remembers getting back to the hotel around 10 p.m. after a tow truck eventually came to pop off the lock on the car.
"That two-hour movie turned into an eight-hour ordeal," Tocchet said. "I think we were about to have pregame in the parking lot the night before. I know it was eight hours. I felt so bad that I left the keys in the car. I guess I was nervous [the night before the game]."
Game 4 finished in just under seven hours. Tocchet played 46:58 minutes and Jones 37:50.
An eight-hour trip to the movies and six overtimes later, Tocchet, Jones and the Flyers were headed back to Philadelphia all even with Pittsburgh.
Something tells us Tocchet and Jones slept instead of watching a movie on the way home.
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