Validation

Those last two minutes, the camera zoomed in on the Washington Capitals bench, and all the agony of 13 years zoomed in with it. Alex Ovechkin kept resting his forehead on the top of the boards, staring at his feet, unable to look. He appeared to gnaw on the end of his stick. He fidgeted like a kid on Christmas morning, before Mom and Dad said it was OK to enter the room.

Because surely something wretched was going to happen, right? Right?

The entire leit motif of Ovechkin's career virtually dictated this, because it has been one unrewarded run of blown 3-1 best-of-seven leads and spectacular failures. The Capitals were the most pitiless heartbreaker in D.C. sports, because neither the Nationals nor Wizards nor Redskins ever promised so much and consistently failed to deliver it the way the Caps did. And of course Ovechkin, the Caps superstar, became the living mascot of that.

He was the Great Eight until it counted. Then he became the Great Defl-Eight, never enough of a leader or able to rise to the occasion when it mattered most.

Well ... no more.

And so when the horn finally sounded last night in Vegas, and the thing was finally, finally, done, Ovechkin really was like that kid on Christmas morning. He grabbed every teammates he could find. He screamed, screamed, screamed his joy in their faces. He reveled in the moment the way few ever have -- and insisted on doing it with his teammates, as the teammate he's long been accused of not being but finally was.

It's rare that you see a man's legacy being cemented in front of your eyes, and know that's what you're seeing. But that's what we got last night.  Ovechkin, the second-best player in his game, is now not just a player with singular skills, but a champion player with singular skills. When people start to debate who's the greatest hockey player never to have won the Stanley Cup, his name will no longer be at the top of the list.

No wonder he kissed the Cup over and over as he paraded around with it raised aloft. This true love took a long time to find.