A dream comes true for NHL veteran

Tampa Bay's captain Dave Andreychuck finally became part of a Stanley Cup.
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Music blared, champagne flowed and Dave Andreychuk struggled to contain his emotions.
After 22 seasons in the NHL, the Tampa Bay Lightning captain will finally have his name engraved on the Stanley Cup.
"You dream about this day for a long time, obviously," the 40-year-old Andreychuk said after the Lightning's Game 7 victory over Calgary.
"It's taken me a while to get to this point, and I don't believe you can put into words the things that are going through your mind. The years that you got knocked off in the first round. The years that you didn't make the playoffs."
First to lift it
Andreychuk was the first player to hoist the NHL's most coveted prize. He hopped twice in jubilation and skated around to the cheers of a sellout crowd of 22,717 before passing it to Tim Taylor, another veteran brought in three years ago to provide leadership on a young club.
"It's awesome for him," Taylor said. "We kept saying this wasn't about Dave. It was about our team. It's special because Dave led the team. Twenty-two years and now he's a Stanley Cup champion. I'm proud to be part of it."
No one had stepped on the ice more times without winning a title than Andreychuk, who won in the 1,759th game of what is likely a Hall of Fame career.
He finished the biggest game of his life in the penalty box, drawing an infraction for tripping with 22 seconds remaining. He bolted out of the box when it was over, dropped his stick and joined teammates in mobbing goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin behind the net.
Strong desire
"This guy wanted it bad," Lightning coach John Tortorella said, adding that Andreychuk tried hard to give outsiders the impression that winning the Cup wasn't as important to him as others imagined.
"He didn't need this to validate his career. I mean, he's a Hall of Famer. But for him to get this, what a sight to see."
Andreychuk had played a record 1,597 regular-season games, and another 161 in the playoffs, without winning an NHL championship. The closest he had come to playing in a Cup final was with Toronto in 1993 and Colorado in 2000, and both times his team lost Game 7 in the conference finals.
The big question now is whether Andreychuk, a first-round draft pick of the Buffalo Sabres in 1982, has played his last game, following the lead of one-time teammate Ray Bourque, who retired after finally winning the Cup in his 22nd season in 2001.
"I am going to savor this moment with my teammates and my family, and this is going to last a while," Andreychuk said. "Then I will make a decision. Obviously this is the pinnacle. This is what we play for, and it's taken me a while to get here. But I'm going to wait and see what happens."
Background
A scorer for 19 seasons with Buffalo, Toronto, New Jersey, Boston and Colorado, Andreychuk signed with the Lightning as a free agent in July 2001 and accepted a role as a checking forward and faceoff specialist to fit into Tortorella's plans.
This season was the 19th in which he's scored at least 20 goals. Only two players -- Hall of Fame member Gordie Howe (22) and Ron Francis (20) -- have had more.
But Andreychuk's biggest contribution to the Lightning probably has been in the locker room, where he has been a leader for a team that lacked discipline on and off the ice while struggling through a NHL-record stretch of four consecutive seasons with at least 50 losses.
He finished these playoffs with one goal and 13 assists in 23 games, with a league-high eight of those assists coming on power-play goals. He didn't score a goal in his last 13 postseason games, but that meant nothing Monday night when he was skating around with the Cup.
"It was a moment that has gone through my head lots of times," Andreychuk said. "Finally, it happened."