Feeling Effects of NHL’s Boston Marathon : Stanley Cup: Losing Bruins suffering more than winning Oilers, but neither will forget three-overtime game.

In the pre-dawn hours Wednesday, Ray Bourque, the iron man of the Boston Bruins, tried to stretch out on a couch at home to alleviate the cramps that gripped his legs.

When that failed, he tried turning over, only to feel the cramps surge through his back.

He reached for a glass but found his hand shaking.

At nearby Massachusetts General Hospital, teammate Craig Janney lay on a bed, intravenous fluid replenishing his aching body.

Dave Poulin lay in his own bed, replaying what seemed like a thousand missed opportunities for the Bruins.

And at a Boston restaurant, the Edmonton Oilers gobbled down the first food they’d had in almost 15 hours.

The stories would continue into the night, the memories long into the years ahead.

No one on the ice Tuesday night at Boston Garden for Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals would forget they’d been in the longest game in finals history, a 115-minute 13-second marathon that stretched over five hours 32 minutes, finally concluding at 1:23 a.m., EDT, when Petr Klima whipped a 20-foot shot past goalie Andy Moog to give Edmonton a 3-2 victory.

Klima was an unlikely hero of this unlikeliest of all games.

His coach, John Muckler, thought Klima might have played five shifts in all before coming out for the game-winner.

Asked when his previous shift had been, Klima replied, “probably before 10 o’clock.”

Muckler had tried to get him out there.

“I told him to get on the ice several shifts earlier,” Muckler said. “But he spent so much time buckling up his helmet, the ref sent him back.”

No such problems for Bourque, the defenseman who seemed to be out there all night. He scored both Boston goals in the third period and foiled more Oiler rushes than he cared to think about.

“He played at least 60 minutes, according to the guys who do our timekeeping,” Bruin Coach Mike Milbury said. “But they may have nodded off for half an hour.”

That’s what Boston wing Cam Neely admitted he felt like doing at one point.

“I hit a wall in the second overtime,” Neely said. “I just thought, ‘I don’t know if I can do this any longer.’ But then, I felt, this is all right. Let’s keep going.”

What kept some of the players going?

Bourque went through six pairs of gloves and several jerseys, and soaked his body in water every chance he got to battle not only the fatigue, but the stifling heat that seemed to hang with the banners above the Garden floor.

“When he leaves the bench,” Milbury said of Bourque, “there’s a puddle of water there. He takes very good care of himself.”

Janney had arrived at the Garden with the flu and a temperature of 100 degrees.

By the third overtime, he was headed for the hospital, the debilitating effects of the flu heightened by the long, hot evening. Janney was released Wednesday and is expected to play in Game 2 Friday night at the Garden.

He didn’t miss much Wednesday. The Bruins had a brief meeting but didn’t practice. The Oilers were given the day off.

While water and soothing massages in the locker room eased the physical strain Tuesday night, the teams tried other methods to battle the mental stress.

“Most of the talking was about how tired Boston was,” Muckler said. “We were trying to psych ourselves up. We were saying, ‘You think we’re tired, imagine how Boston feels.’ ”

In the other locker room, Poulin said he got charged up by the resumption of full lighting on the ice after a power failure in a bank of lights had caused a 25-minute delay early in the third overtime.

“It was like the breaking of a new day,” he said. “I looked up at those lights and thought I was ready to go again on a fresh day.”

Between the second and third overtimes, Poulin and several teammates took time to savor the moment.

“We were saying how great a game it would be to watch if you were a kid,” he said. “You know your dad would not send you to bed, but would let you watch it. So you would hope it would go on forever. If I was a kid, I’d hope they played until 6 a.m.”

As it was, it was the most memorable midnight in Boston since Carlton Fisk hit the home run that won Game 6 of the 1975 World Series.

Or perhaps, since Paul Revere saddled up his horse.