When the Panthers’ first flight of the Stanley Cup Final was delayed, it meant extra time on the tarmac before the nearly six-hour trek across North America.

As forward Anton Lundell joked upon arrival, “The guys who played cards had a little bit more time to win or lose some money.” Don’t worry, there was already plenty of time for that already.

Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final between the Panthers and Oilers was Tuesday night but ended too late for this edition.

The Panthers led the series 3-1.

In this series with the longest distance between teams in Cup final history, the Panthers and Oilers are spending nearly as much time in the air as they are on the ice playing games. Players have taken to poker and other card games, Mario Kart and more to get through the trips and bond even more late in a long season.

“We spend a lot of time on that plane,” Oilers captain Connor McDavid said. “But we have a good time. There’s guys who are playing cards or guys who are playing (Nintendo) Switch or guys who are just napping. There’s a bunch of different guys that are up to different things, but we pass the time anyway.”

The Oilers are all about Mario Kart. Goaltender Stuart Skinner said McDavid plays as Luigi, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins as Mario and Darnell Nurse whatever he’s feeling a the moment.

“He just tries to find any which way to beat us, which never happens,” Skinner said.

Cards are the name of the game for the Panthers, whose plane essentially has a mini casino section: a table of poker and another of Seven Up.

“It’s different, but both are intense,” said center Kevin Stenlund, who plays Seven Up. “It’s a lot of cards, but it definitely helps.”

As for the coaches, it’s a chance to watch video and prepare for the next practice.

“I do a lot of video on the plane and it’s a quiet place even though there’s lots of people there,” the Panthers’ Paul Maurice said. “Everybody’s got work to do or they’re sleeping, so it’s actually a great place to do quiet work.”

Same for the Oilers’ Kris Knoblauch, who also reads books and made sure to mention “eating some great meals.”

When it comes to the science of it, an expert in athlete performance said timing meals for going between time zones is one of the things teams can do to reduce travel fatigue.

“Try to time it a bit more relevant to where you’re going,” said Tom Clark, the performance coach for Formula 1 driver Esteban Ocon on the Alpine F1 Team, who also brought up light exposure as a way to better adjust to time changes like the Panthers and Oilers are doing from Mountain to Eastern. “The less sexy or sort of technical components are the really easy things like stay well-hydrated. You’re in a hypoxic environment on a plane, so you need to sort of go to extra efforts to make sure you’re hydrated.”

Clark brings resistance bands on flights — many of them much longer than the 2,549-mile journey between Edmonton, Alberta and Fort Lauderdale, Florida — and recommends basic mobility routines. Aka, poker games need intermissions, too.