These would be the last meaningful strides of the 2000-01 season for the New Jersey Devils. But they would have to wait for a minute before they could take them and then crumble into a heap of physical and mental exhaustion. The defending Stanley Cup champions had been defeated by the Colorado Avalanche, 3-1, in Game 7. They had already stood for a good five minutes, leaning on their sticks, watching with moist eyes as the Avs flung their gloves and sticks into the air and jumped all over one another on the ice as their fans waved white pom-pons and filled the Pepsi Center with euphoria. The Devils had also worked their way through the ceremonial handshake line, just not entirely. There was still one very important hand left to shake. So the Devils stopped and stood at the blue line and waited on Ray Bourque, the 40-year-old defenseman extraordinaire and man of the hour, who was still being mobbed in front of the Avs net by coaches, wives, children and a few of the guys who work on the ice. Finally, Bourque broke free, and the Devils were able to finish their season.

It was a classy gesture on the part of New Jersey, to wait on Bourque, but it is exactly what you'd expect at the end of the most demanding postseason in all of sports. When you swap blood, sweat and tears for seven games, all to finish off a two-month stretch of playoff hockey, the least you can do is wait a minute to shake the hand of a guy who's been lacing up for 22 seasons just to play in this type of game. Sure, these guys had tried to kill one another for the past two weeks, but make no mistake, they were all fraternity brothers in the end, and the handshake signifies that.

"I'm a sore loser," said Devils defenseman Ken Daneyko, at 37 the second-oldest player in the Finals after Bourque. "But Ray deserves to have his name on the Cup as much as anyone. He has been a credit to the game, and it almost seemed like destiny for him this year. That's not going to make it any easier to go home a loser; it's just a fact."

Daneyko, who has played in all 156 playoff games in Devils history and got his name on the Cup both previous times he'd been in the Finals -- 1995 and 2000 -- finished buttoning his shirt and tightening his tie. Then he confessed, "It feels awkward not winning. It's gonna be weird tomorrow. Physically, I feel great, but mentally, I'm so tired. My wife's put up with hell. I shell up. I get angry and emotional going through this. It's hard on my family."

In the center of the room, Scott Stevens, one of the toughest men in hockey, was looking impossibly vulnerable. For one thing, he'd already shaved off his menacing playoff goatee. For another, he was exhausted.

"I'm drained," he said. "And I'm disappointed. I don't know how much more I can put my feelings into perspective. It hurts to lose any playoff series. But to lose a Game 7 hurts more, I think. It's tough to take."

Stevens was still talking, but the words were a whisper now: "We didn't get it done. But I don't think ... we could have ... tried ... any ... harder."

And in the corner, Bobby Holik said, "Tomorrow is not going to be a good day. It will be hard to get out of bed. You go so hard for so long, you play hurt, you sacrifice your body every shift, and then to finish this way, it's like someone pulls the plug and the lights go out. Right now, I feel like the season was not a success, but then I know it was not a failure. I'm at a loss to describe it. I can't believe it's over."

Meanwhile, down the hall, nearly an hour after the Devils finished shaking Bourque's hand, most of the Avalanche were still in full uniform, right down to their skates. Left wing Shjon Podein, with his jack-o'- lantern smile and mangy beard, was spilling Coors everywhere, bear-hugging everyone in sight, though his wife, Sherry, said she knows what will happen when the adrenaline wears off. "He's in pain," she said. "Everything hurts. He walks slower. It's hard for him to get up. He's exhausted. He's been taking these long naps every day. He just crawls up on the couch and pulls a black T-shirt over his face."

Susan Bray, the girlfriend of center Stephane Yelle, watched her significant other celebrate, then said, "He's got a separated shoulder. He says things like, 'I'm getting too old for this game,' and 'I feel like a 60-year-old man,' and 'Now I know why no one plays past 35. I don't know how many more years I can do this.' And he's only 27."

The grind, as the players call it, had gotten the best of everyone. Even in the champions' dressing room, the smiles couldn't hide that the players look like hell. It was nice, finally, to see a break in the postgame monotony. We had seen enough hobbling around the arenas in wrinkled suits, partaking in the every-other-nightly ritual of slugging bottled water and bland recovery drinks. "Drink 'til your pee don't stink," is what the athletic trainers tell them, to make sure they're sufficiently hydrated. The trainers would also tell the guys to get a good night's sleep, but they knew they'd only be kidding themselves. "I haven't slept well a single night since the playoffs began," said Stevens. "Not after a win. Not after a loss. There's too much going on here."

You've got the games, of course, but you've also got the meetings and mandatory team meals. "They're so worried about us dropping weight, they feed us like six times a day," said Devils goalie Martin Brodeur. "I guarantee you there's no one in Italy who's eaten as much pasta as me the past two months. Do you know how bad I want to go to a Mexican restaurant?" There's also the travel. In the New Jersey-Colorado Finals alone, that meant five four-hour, 1,600-mile trips for the Devils and four for the Avs. Those flights often resembled airborne medical units, with trainers plastic -- wrapping ice bags to those with aching muscles, massage therapists trying to work out various kinks and team doctors applying fresh dressings to cuts. "Our wives and friends remind us from time to time how tired and beat up we look," said Devils defenseman Brian Rafalski. "But we're around each other so much through the playoffs, in hotels, at the rinks and on airplanes, we think we look normal. You see so many fresh cuts, so many stitches going in and out, it's like you don't even notice after a while. It's like we're separated from reality for a while."

They are. There is a postseason code in hockey: No one -- not players, coaches, trainers, doctors, not even wives -- discusses an injury in public. Drapes are hung around examining tables in the trainer's room. Bruises are hidden by towels. "Which ankle is hurting?" a player is asked. "One of them," is the response. This is done to keep information from the enemy. Admit to a separated shoulder, and expect to be hit on that shoulder the very next game.

But it is more than that. Discussing an injury is admitting to vulnerability. You can't go two months and win 16 games if you think even for a second that you cannot overcome any physical challenge. That is how the code works.

And that is why these guys actually think they look good, or at least exactly the way hockey players want to look eight weeks into the playoffs-gaunt, gray-faced, scarred and even pimpled from so many hours in a nasty, sweaty, smelly helmet. After Game 5, as he was being ushered to a television interview, Devils center Scott Gomez suddenly stopped in his tracks. "Can you do me a favor?" the hero of the game asked a female reporter, motioning with his right index finger that he wanted to whisper the request. "Can I borrow some makeup, please?" he asked sweetly. Then, noticing the woman's perplexed look, Gomez rolled his eyes skyward, lifting his bushy black eyebrows into arches, and said, "Check out the zit on my forehead. I can't go on TV with that." No, it may not have been as cool -- looking as any of the three freshly stitched scars on Daneyko's 37-year-old face, or as tough -- looking as that sweet, raised welt on the forehead of Colorado defenseman Adam Foote, the one he swears dates back to the Avs' '96 Cup run. But a hockey afficionado knows a playoff zit when he sees one.

"You have to be proud of all the marks on your face in the Finals," said Avalanche defenseman Eric Messier, who wore a face full of blood after getting his eyebrow sliced open in Game 2. "The bruises and scratches. There are many players who would like these."

It's true, many NHL players can only dream of being so ugly the first week in June. Any loser can be tanned, rested and breaking 80 consistently this time of year. Only the lucky ones, the players on the best two teams, get to look and feel this terrible. It's a world few can comprehend, what the Devils and Avalanche just put themselves through these past two months. Modern-day playoff hockey, with the size and speed of the players, was not meant to be played this way. Not by human beings, anyway. "Their bodies are wasted," says T.R. Goodman, a workout guru who trains a number of NHL players in the off-season. "Their skeletal systems are all out of alignment from the pounding. Their muscle tissue is virtually destroyed from skating. Their hip flexors, groins and abdominal walls are all incredibly tight. Factor in dehydration and sleep deprivation. At the end of the season, it will take most of them six to eight weeks to recover."

"No other professional sport has a playoff schedule as physically taxing," says Rangers team physician Barton Nisonson. "I think only those who've lived through it can truly understand it. I'll never forget Brian Leetch in '94. He had a separated shoulder that would have kept him out during the regular season, but it wasn't even something we could discuss during the Finals. I couldn't even ask, 'How are you?' I'm not sure how he raised the Cup over his head."

For the Avalanche, 23 games in 59 days. For the Devils, 25 in 59. And it wasn't only the number of games, it was the intensity. "It's the equivalent of playing 75 regular-season games," said Devils defenseman Ken Sutton. "The way guys are coming at you, games every other day. It's a whole bunch of sacrifices to make it happen. You have to sacrifice your body, you have to sacrifice your family and your friends and free time. But saying all that, it's the greatest thing I've ever lived through."

War analogies in sports are lame, but how can you avoid them here? In this postseason, you had the Avalanche marching on to the title, even after losing their best player, Peter Forsberg, because he had to have his spleen removed after Game 7 of the Western Conference semifinals. Even more amazing, after having his abdominal wall opened up, Forsberg desperately tried to return for the Finals ... and it wouldn't have caught the Devils the least bit surprised.

You had the Devils winning Games 4 and 5 of the Finals after their top center, Jason Arnott, took a puck to the temple in the opening minutes of Game 4. For several minutes after Arnott took the hit, Devils returning to the bench after a shift had to step over a 6'4", 225-pound man, who couldn't quite make it to his seat. "I reached for the boards and couldn't find them," said Arnott, who had collapsed and blacked out for several seconds. "It was scary." Did we mention that Arnott got back on the ice? He played a little more, before drawing his own conclusion that, "Even though I was out there, I wasn't really out there. If I'd gotten hit again, who knows what would have happened? But that's the Stanley Cup playoffs. You want to play if it's at all possible."

And when it isn't possible, as in the case of Forsberg, or the Devils' Randy McKay, who broke a bone in his hand in Game 1 of the Finals, the painful feeling of helplessness might be worse than any injury. "You get so nervous," Forsberg said. "You just want to get out there and play. When you're watching, it seems like you feel everyone's pain."

But to those willing to put themselves through torture to win 16 games in the postseason, pain is irrelevant. How else can you explain 40-year-old Bourque outracing 25-year-old speedster Patrik Elias for a loose puck with a minute left in Game 7? How else can you explain Bourque, a red welt on his forehead, a nasty gash on his cheek, his face the color of a sky ready to snow, still in garter belt and shin guards, limping through the corridor of the Pepsi Center an hour after the game-and smiling?

How else can you explain his parting comment before ducking back into the locker room? Said Bourque, "It's gonna be a great summer."

This article appears in the June 25 issue of ESPN The Magazine.