On May 18th, the Carolina Hurricanes and Florida Panthers played each other in Game 1 of the NHL Eastern Conference Finals. It took 4 overtimes for Florida to defeat Carolina 3-2. There was 1 hour, 19 minutes and 47 seconds of scoreless overtime, and the game lasted a total of 5 hours and 44 minutes. Eventually, Mathew Tkachuck scored the sudden death winner to finish the marathon game. Below is a list of six things you could do in a shorter amount of time than it took for this hockey game to finish.

1. Take a flight from New York to Los Angeles

Time it would take = 5 hours and 24 minutes.

Time you would have left = 20 minutes.

You could take a transcontinental flight across the United States, but would that be as exciting as watching playoff hockey? You could theoretically watch the game on the plane, but unless it is extremely important, I would prioritize the game.

2. Watch the fastest marathon ever, TWICE

Time it would take = 4 hours and 4 minutes.

Time you would have left = 1 hour and 40 minutes.

You could watch Eliud Kipchoge break the world record marathon time at 2:01.09. And then you could grab a bite, walk your dog, call your grandma, then settle down and watch it a second time. It was extremely impressive and worthy of watching, but do you really need to watch it back to back instead of watching playoff hockey? You would definitely still have more time after all of that, so if you felt inspired, you would have a little amount of time to try to run yourself.

3. Drive to Cheyenne, drive back to Boulder, and then drive back to Cheyenne.

Time it would take = 4 hours and 36 minutes.

Time you would have left = 1 hour and 8 minutes.

You could drive to Cheyenne, then to Boulder, then back to Cheyenne, but is it worth it? Driving back and forth sounds like a massive waste of time, energy, and money. But, if you would rather do that instead of watching something exciting, be my guest. You would still have over an hour to do anything you wanted, so you could maybe grab lunch in Cheyenne to make the adventure at least a little worthwhile.

4. Watch any two Star Wars movies.

Time it would take = 4 hours and 12 minutes – 4 hours and 54 minutes.

Time you would have left = 1 hour to 1 hour and 32 minutes.

You could watch any two Star Wars movies with a lot of time left, and these are actually pretty exciting movies. This is arguably, the best movie series of all time and any of the choices are exciting, even The Phantom Menace. Even George Lucas found a way to make a movie about trade embargos exciting. Honestly, if you aren’t into hockey, this might be the best choice to spend your time. However, I would still pick hockey.

5. Watch two regulation length hockey games.

Time it would take = About 5 hours.

Time you would have left = About 54 minutes.

If, for some reason, instead of watching a four overtime playoff thriller, you were in the mood to watch two boring regular season regulation length games, this choice would be for you. Is it a weird choice? Yes. Could you still do it? Sure, plus there are a lot of normal hockey games that are very exciting. And you could even start watching a third game with the spare time. All that being said, in this situation 2.5 is not greater than 1. I would recommend the playoff game.

6. Go to school and attend 6 classes!

Time it would take = 5 hours and 30 minutes.

Time you would have left = 24 minutes.

Instead of doing something super exciting like watching playoff hockey, you could attend school and further your education! Most students at Fairview take 6 classes, so this would be perfect! Imagine, while you are in math class learning about vectors, Aleksander Barkov just scored to tie the game up at one! Then when you are annotating The Handmaids Tale in Language Arts, Carter Verhaeghe scored to put Florida up 2-1! Then finally, when you are taking a test during physics, Matthew Tkachuk scored a sudden death goal in the fourth overtime!

Ultimately, my advice would have been to prioritize the hockey game over any of the aforementioned choices, except for probably school, because you may get in trouble for not attending that. The game would have been worth it though! The NHL Playoffs continue until mid June, so tune in to the next game, it might just go to five overtimes and surpass the 6 hour mark!