Before Game 5 was over, he was crying.
Then, when it ended, he cried some more.
A few minutes later, Teemu Selanne — yes, indeed — was crying again.
“I realized this is it, I’ve won the Cup,” he said that night. “I’ve been so close to winning an Olympic gold medal and World Championship. … I’m so happy I finally won something.”
Selanne called the Stanley Cup “the biggest trophy for a hockey player,” its size even more towering considering that, until that moment now a decade ago, he thought he hadn’t, wait, won anything? Ah, really?
Sorry, Teemu, by that point, you’d already won life, your victory measurable in popularity, dollars or any one of the dozen cars you could choose to drive to the next place where, upon being recognized, you’d feel beloved.
Yet, it was this trophy — roughly 35 inches tall and 35 pounds heavy — that, in the eyes of a player who saw pretty much everything in his 21 NHL seasons, made Selanne a winner.
Validation — genuine or just perceived, it doesn’t really matter — is what a championship brings to the career of the professional athlete, the 2007 Ducks no exception.
“Every single person on that team had the mindset that we were going to win the Cup or it was going to be a grave disappointment,” defenseman Chris Pronger said. “I know teams think they can win the Cup, but they don’t truly believe it. We knew we could win the Stanley Cup.”
Pronger would appear in 18 seasons, 173 playoff games and two other Stanley Cup finals. Despite accomplishing enough for inclusion in the Hall of Fame, he wouldn’t win a title again.
In fact, only five of the 28 players who participated in the playoffs that spring for the Ducks won another championship, although Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry are the among those still trying.
Chris Kunitz is still trying, too, the winger currently competing for his fourth overall Cup and third with Pittsburgh.
Those players are all remembered fondly today by Ducks fans, no matter the size of their contribution, the warm sensation the sort that can come only from the glow of a shared championship experience.
Players like Travis Moen, a classic grinder who was once described by the Montreal Gazette as “an industrial strength, meat-and-potatoes winger.”
Moen scored 11 goals in the 2006-07 regular season and then, in 21 playoff games, practically exploded with seven more, including the Cup-clincher.
In November, after finishing his career in Dallas, Moen officially retired. He released a statement first thanking all his teammates, then his coaches, then the athletic training staffs and then the fans.
Only then did Moen acknowledge anything that happened on the ice. And that acknowledgment consisted of just a single moment from his 12 seasons: winning the ’07 Cup.
“Nothing,” Moen said, “beats that feeling of accomplishing your childhood dream.”
Yeah, the memory of Moen is embraced in Anaheim, just as it is with all his 2006-07 teammates, from Andy McDonald to Joe DiPenta, Dustin Penner to Kent Huskins, Scott Niedermayer to his little brother Rob.
Even for the role players, their bonds with the team’s fans, though not as unbreakable, are no less permanent than the ones that tether the all-time franchise favorites.
Just think of Paul Kariya, Steve Rucchin and Ruslan Salei – each among the top six in games played for this Ducks – having never won a Stanley Cup in NHL careers that lasted a combined 2,641 games.
It was Wayne Gretzky who said that lifting the Stanley Cup for the first time in 1984 was the equivalent of lifting a burden, the sensation hitting him right there on the ice that his superstar career had been forever clinched.
Timing, especially at this point in the year, is vital in the NHL, so many huge goals the result of opportune bounces or unforeseen deflections.
Career timing also matters when it comes to winning championships, perhaps no player in NHL history more fortunate in that sense than Mark Hartigan, the personification of right place, right time.
Hartigan made the league as an undrafted free agent, the theme of an overachieving outsider about to fit him perfectly. After being acquired in a late January trade, he appeared in six regular season games with the ’07 Ducks.
He then played in just a single playoff game, during the opening round against Minnesota, for five shifts and barely three minutes total.
After leaving the Ducks in the offseason and signing with Detroit, Hartigan played in four playoff games as the Red Wings won the ’08 Stanley Cup.
So, here was a guy whose teams won the most revered trophy in sports in consecutive years — the only two times Hartigan’s clubs advanced to the playoffs — and his career consisted of 25 total postseason minutes.
With such limited involvement, NHL guidelines prevented Hartigan’s name from being etched on the Stanley Cup. But he was allowed to skate with the trophy in both post-victory on-ice celebrations and, both summers, was given the Cup for a day.
Hartigan also was presented with title rings by the Ducks and Red Wings.
Now, just as a comparison, take the career of San Jose’s Patrick Marleau, who is still without championship jewelry after 19 NHL seasons, 177 Stanley Cup playoff games and 3,303 postseason minutes.
Hartigan will never know the feeling of his team being eliminated from the NHL playoffs, while Marleau has felt that sting 17 times.
It’s enough to make a grown man cry, the helpless feeling of chasing an elusive dream as emotionally taxing as the peerless feeling of catching it.
