“I think it’s just time, right?” Draisaitl said. “If you have six or seven weeks to get your cardio back up and running, there’s just not enough time, really. So when you have four months, you can ramp it up, properly plan out your summer and not kind of just go on the fly as it comes.
“Short summers are a great sign. We want more short summers, but this one might have come at the right time.”
What the Oilers hope to take advantage of beyond the physical benefits of a longer summer is the mental reset it provided them to be ready to attack the regular season and ramp up their game to find the right team identity in time for playoffs – something that Draisaitl picked out as a priority for the team in the weeks leading up to puck drop.
After two straight visits to the Stanley Cup Final, shorter offseasons in 2025 & 2026 led to slow starts for the Oilers and less emphasis on the regular season, which Draisaitl & his teammates hope to reverse right from the get-go this campaign under the new leadership of Head Coach Mike Babcock.
“I think we just have to understand that this is where you build your game for [Game 85] and on, right?” Draisaitl said. “These winning environments and these winning streaks and exactly knowing what the perfect game for you as a team looks like. You have to create that over the regular season, and I don’t think we did that at all last season. I don’t think that we ever really figured out what our A-game really was, and on top of that, we weren’t able to sustain it.”