The Flyers’ annual West Coast road trip is a challenge not only for the players but the team’s equipment staff

LAS VEGAS ― There’s only so much room when packing for a trip but Travis Sanheim ensured he had enough space for his noise machine and humidifier.

The two machines help the defenseman create a constant environment at each hotel stop. They allow him to be at his best, which is necessary for a guy who leads the Flyers in average ice time and ranks 10th in the NHL at 24 minutes, 53 seconds.

So each night, especially after one of the five games on this 10-day road trip, he falls asleep to the sound of a storm.

“Your head’s kind of thinking about everything that happened, all the different plays, good and bad, and sometimes you need a little help falling asleep,” he said.

Sleep is important, maybe more so when traveling to the West Coast. Jamie Drysdale is a big-time napper and, while he is used to a crazy travel schedule from his time playing with the Anaheim Ducks, he tries to get as much sleep as possible.

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His good buddy Cam York is the polar opposite. The blueliner feels that if he takes a nap during the day, he’ll be up all night. Getting the sleep schedule down is hard with being three hours behind Philly.

“When we come out West, you want to kind of maybe find a way to stay up a little later because you’re so tired, but you don’t want to go to sleep at 8, 9 o’clock either and wake up at 4 or 5 in the morning,” captain Sean Couturier said.

“Just try to kind of fight that sleep and then try to get as much rest as you can in the morning. But other than that, I think eating you try to kind of find the same schedule, but, obviously, it’s an adaptation. It’s not easy, but it is what it is.”

The Flyers’ schedule is meticulously crafted. Once the league sent out the team’s 82-game slate in July, coach John Tortorella and Bryan Hardenbergh, vice president of player engagement and team services, laid out the practice and travel plans. Tortorella said they knew there wouldn’t be much time to practice on this five-city trip as they wanted to get the team as much rest as possible.

“You got to take care of yourself,” forward Scott Laughton said. “I think it’s a lot of travel. Definitely miss my baby boy at home, I’ll say that, but yeah, it’s hard with all the travel and things like that. But you take care of yourself and you try and play simple, simple games throughout the road trip and see where it takes you.”

So far, so good. The Flyers are 2-1-0 to start, with the lone defeat coming against the Los Angeles Kings in a game where the team played well. The Orange and Black now face two stiff tests in the Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday (10 p.m., NBCSP+) and a Sunday night matchup in Toronto against the Maple Leafs (7 p.m., NBCSP).

Although Toronto is the home of several players on the team, Tortorella and Sanheim mentioned they would have appreciated a pit stop against a club in the middle of the country to get acclimated to an earlier time zone before heading to Eastern Canada. However, they will have two days to get their sleep schedule back on track before Sunday as the Flyers will leave Friday and practice Saturday in Ontario.

“At the beginning of the year we came home and we played,” Tortorella said. “But that’s the schedule we were fed. That’s the schedule teams like us get. So we don’t complain about it, we just got to try to deal with it.” It’s worth noting that the Flyers hit the West Coast every year for the holidays, which coincides with Disney on Ice making its annual stop at the Wells Fargo Center.

Whether the Flyers are traveling for one-game trips — they had multiple one-offs in the first few months of the season that Tortorella said “wore us out” — the equipment remains the same outside of an extra stick bag; players will generally bring one extra stick per game with them on the five-game trip.

According to head equipment manager Rick Bronwell, the Flyers provide a standardized list of things they need to the home team, and vice versa when teams go to Philly. Home clubs supply tape but the Flyers prefer Howies Hockey Tape, which not everyone has. And of course, they bring plenty of gum — Dubble Bubble and Big League Chew are the go-tos — and Hi-Chew.

Like the players on the ice, Bronwell and his assistant equipment managers John Peters and Alan Oman, are a well-oiled machine. Sleep is just as important for them, considering they’re up and at the rink early — sometimes after being there late. The team arrived in Las Vegas after their win in San Jose, Calif., on New Year’s Eve, and the trio headed straight to T-Mobile Arena with the gear, which was still wet, to get it dried and ready to go for practice the next afternoon.

Hockey gear isn’t the only thing brought on the planes.

With the road trip being a long and winding one, Drysdale brought an iPad stocked with movies. He recently downloaded “Carry-On,” “Jurassic Park III,” and a few Harry Potter movies — his Hogwarts house depends on the day, he said — and watched “Green Lantern” on Wednesday night, giving it a “meh” rating. York said he sits with Drysdale on the plane and usually watches whatever he is watching.

» READ MORE: Flyers turn to Aleksei Kolosov at goalie with Sam Ersson day to day for lower-body injury

Looking forward to finishing the road trip in his hometown, Morgan Frost also brought some movies on an iPad and rewatched the first “Transformers.”

Some guys play card games. “Play a lot of poker,” said Laughton. “Yeah, we play a lot of poker. I don’t bring headphones. I don’t bring a show. I don’t bring anything. I barely put on the TV. I play a lot of poker, and I love going to dinner with the guys.” Couturier is part of the poker group and while he wasn’t sure who is the best at it, he was quick to point out that he thought Laughton was the worst.

Other guys play video games. Owen Tippett is among the group that brought a gaming laptop and he has played Fortnite. Sanheim said he plays Call of Duty with one of his teammates.

“Lots of yelling involved [but] we’re getting better so that helps,” Sanheim chuckled.

Aleksei Kolosov will get the start against the Golden Knights.