When it comes to logging hard miles, no team has shed more blood, sweat and tears over the last two years than the Edmonton Oilers and Florida Panthers.

At 211 regular season and playoff games each, they’ve invested more of themselves into the last 24 months than any other club.

The difference between Edmonton and Florida, of course, is that while the Panthers are buoyed and inspired by their championships, with dreams of a three-peat dancing in their heads, the Oilers head into the season with nothing to show for their investment but the physical and emotional scarring that comes from two failed runs to the Final.

At what point does it catch up with them?

When you’ve spent two short summers in a row trying to recover from the hardest gut shots of your life, how do you get up for another swing?

It’s going to a special kind of mental toughness for the Oilers to emerge from an increasingly difficult Western Conference and make it to the a third-straight Final.

And history is not on their side.

None of the last five teams to lose two Cup Finals in a row came back and won in year three — not the 1979 Boston Bruins, not the 1971 St. Louis Blues (who lost three Finals in a row), not the 1965 Detroit Red Wings, not the 1961 Toronto Maple Leafs and not the 1959 Bruins.

Even when there were only six teams in the NHL it was nearly impossible to get there three years in a row.

The last team to lose two Stanley Cup Finals in a row and then win in the third year was the 1956 Montreal Canadiens, who began their five-in-a-row dynasty.

Is that what the Oilers are on the verge of becoming? Or do they fade away like the other dejected contenders whose best shot wasn’t good enough?

The journey down one of those paths begins now. In addition to the obvious, building a team on the ice that is better than last year’s, there are the emotional challenges that come with sinking all of your heart and soul into something that results in a crushing heartbreak. Twice.

So that will be one of the primary items on the Oilers agenda as they try again to fit through that Stanley Cup window.

This team’s philosophy is to stop and smell the roses along this latest journey. Soak it all in. Instead of just trying to get the regular season out of the way so they can get back to the meat of things, they want to savour the little things along the way. A rookie’s first game in Madison Square Garden, a three-game road trip to California in February, having some laughs with the guys.

Playing in the NHL is supposed to be fun, so shake off the last two years and have some fun.

“You have to take care of yourself and find the little enjoyments along the way,” said Leon Draisaitl. “Get a day off here and there and just enjoy the ride. We’re ready for another long season, hopefully.”

The playoffs are still all that matter, but they can’t play 82 games under a dark cloud and expect to be ready and in the right frame of mind come April.

That why adding some new players and coaches helps. It injects a little new energy into a mix that captain Connor McDavid admitted got a little stale last season.

“You can have that with older teams that have one eye on the playoffs,” McDavid said. “So you can have some monotonous days, and I felt that last year.”

Newcomers Andrew Mangiapane, David Tomasek, Matt Savoie and Curtis Lazar can help with that. So can youngsters like Noah Philp and Ike Howard, who are trying to get their foot in the door.

“I think it’s motivation, I think it’s excitement and it brings energy to the rink every day,” said McDavid. “It’s a new project, something to work on and build on.”

They lost some key players last summer, like Corey Perry, Evander Kane, Connor Brown and John Klingberg, so it’s going to be a different team this year. The question remains: will it be better.

“We can be a little bit more energetic, maybe a little faster,” said Draisaitl. “How it all plays out, how our team is going to look, what our dynamic is, what our identity is, that’s all to be seen. You have to work on that, you have to create that. Everybody looks good. We’ll see what we have.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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