Stanley Cup grind: How the Panthers and Oilers have endured extended seasons and endless travel

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.

The Edmonton Oilers have traveled an awfully long road to get right back where they started.

Theyve endured a harrowing two-week stretch in January that took them from west to east to west again, with stops in Seattle, Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Edmonton, Minnesota, Colorado and Vancouver.

Advertisement Theyve started three playoff rounds on the road before this Stanley Cup Final.

In all, theyve played 103 games over 248 days, criss-crossing the continent over and over and over.

And that was before stepping off their latest six-hour flight with a must-win situation staring them in the face Tuesday against the Florida Panthers.

They must be exhausted.

Every last one of them.

And the Panthers? Their past two seasons have ended on June 24 and June 13, respectively.

Game 6 of this years Stanley Cup Final is on June 17, with the possibility of a return to Edmonton for Game 7 on June 20.

Tuesdays game will be their 314th over the past three seasons (and the Oilers 304th).

While the rest of the NHL rests or golfs or gets to work on next season, these teams are grinding their way through endless schedules and travel between the two furthest-apart cities that have ever been featured in an NHL championship series for the second year in a row.

Matthew Tkachuk, one of 11 players in the series who also didnt get a vacation during the 4 Nations Face-Off in February, said the grind is probably worse than anybody could imagine.

Its not easy, Oilers forward Connor Brown agreed.

Whats keeping them going? Theres lots of motivation, lots of excitement, said Oilers captain Connor McDavid.

Were in the same boat, you know, and theyve had an extra year of it.

Two teams that know what its like to play in this intensity, in this environment and this time of the year.

Tkachuk said recovery is critical to how the Panthers endure it.

After every game, regular season or playoffs, you can all but guarantee the word recovery will escape the lips of every Panthers player interviewed.

Its become a mantra.

Tkachuk joked hes not going to give away the Panthers recovery secrets to potential copycats.

Then some other teams might think that they could be in this position, he said.

Advertisement Of course, he said this while wearing a cut-up, well-worn T-shirt that showed distinguishable evidence under it of cupping therapy, which is a recovery technique to increase blood flow, reduce muscle tension and accelerate healing.

While Tkachuk may not have been willing to divulge Floridas recovery techniques, Evan Rodrigues in his second season with the Panthers went into more detail during a one-on-one interview with The Athletic .

He said one thing virtually every player does after every flight home or road is go to the pool for a dynamic warmup that gets their legs moving.

Rodrigues says that has been especially important after the 2,600-mile Fort Lauderdale-to-Edmonton and Edmonton-to-Fort Lauderdale flights in the past two finals.

Most guys do it, Rodrigues said.

Some guys will bike and then pool, some guys will just bike, work out.

Some guys will just go to the pool.

Everyone kind of has their thing.

Some guys like Normatec.

...

Some guys are big cold tub guys and hot tub guys, and some guys are just more flush, you know getting moving, getting the legs going.

Everybody has their thing that they find works for them.

And thats just come over the years of just doing different things.

And during the regular season, we prioritize it too, so guys find what works, so that when it comes to playoffs youre not overthinking it.

Rodrigues said players are given a lot of latitude to figure out what works for them individually.

Plus, with the Panthers, he said, practices are very minimal, I would say, compared to a lot of teams.

That includes the Oilers, who have opted to increase their work rate as this series has progressed.

McDavid and Leon Draisaitl have taken the practice ice each of the four days theyve spent in Fort Lauderdale when there wasnt a game, hoping the extra cardio would reverse some of the lethargy that seeped in during the wait for this series to get going.

Advertisement I dont think weve come out of the break feeling our best as a group or as a whole, said McDavid.

A.J.

Greer, in his first year with the Panthers after signing a two-year deal seven days after Florida won the Cup last summer, said he learned quickly what the Panthers meant by recovery.

Emotional recovery, physical recovery, mental recovery, Greer said.

Physical recovery is easy.

Get in the sauna, get in the cold tub, work out, stretch, do what you have to do.

Mental recovery is resetting, being able to ground yourself and come back after a big win or a big loss and know youre going from A to B to C the same way you did before the last game.

Its the mindset that you respect the game plan, you respect your teammates and they expect you to come in a certain way and you expect them to as well.

So its a mutual respect.

And then emotionally, especially in playoffs: no high, no low.

Stay even-keeled.

Being able to just stay level.

Tkachuk echoed that recovery isnt just physical.

On days when youre not playing, get away from the game, he said.

Get your body back to as close to good as you can get it for the next game.

Thats very important.

We do so many different things at home, on the road, but thats a big thing for us, and weve been preaching it for pretty close to three years now, and its helped us a lot.

And its been great, a very big reason why we continue to have success deep into the playoffs and then come back after a few months and are able to get right back in the swing of things.

Our team does a really good job of training really hard in the summer were a very well-conditioned group and then dealing with the aches and the pains of long playoff runs.

And we do a really good job of those days in between games, of getting back to how we need to be.

Advertisement Carter Verhaeghe, who in the past four years has three series-clinching goals and 13 game-winners (six more than any other player), admits the short offseasons and the grind of 82-game seasons plus 20-plus-game postseasons wear on him.

After scoring 42 goals and 73 points in 2022-23 and 34 and 72 in 2023-24, Verhaeghes totals dipped to 20 and 53 this regular season.

That was a big challenge for, I think, our whole group, and definitely myself early on, Verhaeghe said.

When you play back-to-back finals and win the Stanley Cup, and you dont have much recovery (time) you dont have much of a summer youre not trying to prepare for the next season almost.

Youre kind of in recovery mode rather than training-for-the-season mode, and it catches up to you.

Coach Paul Maurice said Verhaeghe started to hit his stride around early March, when the playoffs were in sight.

And in these playoffs, Verhaeghe has 20 points in 22 games, scored his third career game-winning goal in the Stanley Cup Final tied for the second most in the NHL since 1995 and scored his latest series clincher in the conference final against the Carolina Hurricanes.

There's no such thing as a tough angle for Carter Verhaeghe Let's break down Verhaeghe's game-winning goal that sent the @FlaPanthers to the #StanleyCup Final! NHL Edge IQ powered by @awscloud pic.twitter.com/9mLLUam7H8 NHL (@NHL) May 29, 2025 When youre playing Game 31 and you still have 50 more left to build your game, its tough mentally to stay in it, Verhaeghe said.

I dont want to say its hard to be motivated, but this many games is tiring, so I almost intentionally tried to pace myself.

Heavy legs and foggy minds aside, the reminder of why players grind through this will be wheeled into Amerant Bank Arena by Cup Keeper Phil Pritchard on Tuesday night.

Advertisement One team is trying to lift it again.

The other is fighting to tack another three days and 2,600 more air miles onto the 2024-25 NHL season.

Absolutely you get tired, Panthers forward Sam Reinhart said, but added, Just because you played a lot of hockey doesnt mean you cant be feeling your best at any given moment.

(Illustration: Dan Goldfarb / The Athletic , with photos of Matthew Tkachuk and Connor McDavid by Andrew Mordzynski / Icon Sportswire and Bruce Bennett / Getty Images).

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