[Video]After a 22 Year Career, NHL Player Raymond Bourque Wins His First Stanley Cup

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Some back story for non-hockey fans:

He played 21 seasons for one team in one city. He was easily one of the greatest hockey players of all time. The ultimate teammate, consummate employee and team leader, the ideal family man, a gem of the community. Yet there was one component missing in Ray Bourque's career and life: a Stanley Cup.

His team, the Boston Bruins, respected him enough that they couldn't bear the thought of Bourque ending his career without experiencing the elation of winning a Stanley Cup.

Twenty-one seasons with the Bruins began with the hope and dream of reaching the ultimate quest; two actually ending in the Stanley Cup Finals; but none ended in victory. "There were many times," he once said, "when I felt it just wasn't going to happen for me, that I was never going to experience the greatest feeling a hockey player can achieve."

So Bruins management did the unthinkable: knowing the Bruins did not have a legitimate chance to win it all in Bourque's 21st season, they traded him, less than a month before the playoffs, to the Colorado Avalanche.

They reached the Western Conference finals, but lost Game 7 to the Dallas Stars. "I was beginning to wonder, 'Am I cursed or something?'" he told the press.

The Avs stormed out of the gate for the 2000-01 season, cruised through the season and the early playoff rounds, right into the Stanley Cup Finals against the New Jersey Devils. The Avs fell behind in the series, 3 games to 2, and faced elimination in New Jersey, but they battled to win and send the series back to Denver for Game 7. When the Avs built a 3-1 lead in the third period, it became quite clear that the moment had arrived for Bourque, that his story was actually going to have a storybook conclusion.