In the early morning hours of June 10, 2000, the New Jersey Devils won their second Stanley Cup in six years in a double-overtime game against Dallas. Less than three months later, the Devils were back in training camp. Tonight, they can successfully defend the Cup with a victory over the Colorado Avalanche.

To do so will be no small feat. The final two games last year were triple- and double-overtime affairs. The offseason was short and filled with celebration and banquets for the winners.

As with all Stanley Cup playoff years, this year is a physical and mental battle to be the last team standing. If the Devils can win tonight, it will have taken 24 playoff games to etch their names on the Cup for the second consecutive year. Those 24 games will tie the record set by the 1991 Pittsburgh Penguins for the most postseason playoff games necessary to win the Cup.

If the Devils can win two Cups in a row, they will be only the 17th team to do so since the NHL took possession of Lord Stanley’s bowl in 1918. They will have gotten there by beating the team with the best record during the regular season, the Avs, and will have overcome the Ray Bourque factor.

If the Devils win the Cup, in six or seven games, they will be up for dynasty consideration. A Cup championship will be their third in seven years. They had the second-best regular season win percentage in the 1990s and have won the Eastern Conference Championship four of the past five years.

As an organization, under the leadership of former Providence College hockey coach and athletic director Lou Lamoriello, they’re second to none in scouting and molding winning formulas on the ice. With Larry Robinson behind the bench, they have a respected and articulate head coach who won six Cups as a Hall of Fame defenseman with the Canadians and one in his first year as head coach in New Jersey last year.

Win or lose the Cup this year, they are going to be just as good for years to come with the depth of young talent already playing at the NHL level.

What stands in the Devils’ way are the Avs. This is the team most thought would become the dynasty after they won the Cup in 1996. Colorado has been a juggernaut since, but never again have they skated for the Cup.

This year they were the best of the regular season and looked to make themselves better with the late-season acquisition of Rob Blake from the L.A. Kings. All season, the Bourque story of a record 21 playoff years with a Cup has been the adrenalin that has fueled the Avs’ drive.

That is why this year’s Stanley Cup Finals has had so much intrigue as well as being such a titanic matchup on the ice. The fans in New Jersey see a conspiracy against them by the NHL to get Bourque the Cup just for the story. To Devils fans, and even to some Devils players, they are the great team nobody knows about.

The Avs feel the weight of everything. They are the ones supposed to win. They are the ones with the Bourque wrong to right. They are the team with the finesse style that the NHL likes to promote, battling the trapping, slow-the-game-down Devils. The Avs are supposed to make everything right.

The Stanley Cup will sit in its case with white-gloved handlers beside it just off the ice surface at the Meadowlands tonight. It will peacefully await its suitors, gleaming inside its protective enclave. The right to skate with this lady must be earned.

If the Devils lose, she will leave for Game 7 in Denver untouched. If the Devils win, she will skate all night.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.