"It was a different kind of satisfaction from the time we won in Calgary,'' he said. "Personally, I don't think I properly savored the moment when I was 22. When you do something that important that young, that early in your career, it's kinda like, 'I'll be back. We'll be back. This is just the first of many.'
"Then I went 10 years between Cups. As the years roll by, you get to wondering if it'll ever happen again. Going through it a second time, I realized how hard it actually was, and how much it meant.
"Plus my mom had passed away and I'd blown my knee out the year before and had double bilateral ACL surgery. So there was a lot emotion built up through that playoff run."
Two months after playing in his 1,000th career game, on March 19, 2002, Nieuwendyk was traded to the New Jersey Devils with Jamie Langenbrunner for Jason Arnott, Randy McKay and a first-round draft pick. By then, he'd adjusted his game and had become a top-notch defensive center and faceoff man. That completeness convinced Wayne Gretzky to make him part of Canada's roster at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, where the Canadians won the gold medal for the first time in 50 years.
With New Jersey, Nieuwendyk won the Stanley Cup for a third time in 2003, but a hip injury sustained during the Eastern Conference Final kept him out of the Final.
"That was obviously very difficult," he said. "I enjoyed my time in New Jersey. Emotionally, you're maybe not as invested as with Calgary or Dallas. I mean, I only spent a year and a half there.
"It certainly wasn't the way, but I'll certainly take another Cup for it."