One player said he remembers every second of it, but none of the four who discussed it with The Athletic could pin down the exact date, or the opponents involved. Hynes said he remembers the events well, except he probably had the year wrong.

One player, the first to recite the story, wasn’t on the team the year Hynes thinks it took place. Maybe he didn’t need to be there. Maybe the players of the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Penguins have turned this into folk lore that gets passed down through the years, a minor-league hockey legend of sorts.

Here are the general parameters of the tale. The Penguins had just played two bad games on Friday and Saturday nights, and had a Sunday afternoon contest to complete one of minor hockey’s brutal staples — a 3-in-3.

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