Happy Birthday Patrik
Happy 30th Birthday, Patrik Elias. Welcome to unrestricted free agency. Under the new collective bargaining agreement, the age for UFA drops to 30 years old as of July 1st, and Patrik glides in like a Little Leaguer who gains an another year of eligibility under the new age rules.
With last week’s hat trick, and this week’s game-saving assists against Carolina, I think it’s time Lou baked a Patty-cake with a nice (large) multi-year contract inside. Averaging more than a point a game for the thirty-plus games he’s been on the ice, Elias has been the most productive Devil this season on a production basis. Give him the money, the “C”, and maybe help him sign a new signature stick deal with Mission.
Part of Elias’ decision is likely to be based on his teammates. Unlike Scott Niedermayer, he doesn’t have a brother waving from the left coast. However, Elias is without a Czech mate on the Devils. He and Sykora were good friends, even Bobby Holik and Jiri Bicek counted for some cultural coin. So when it’s time to go shopping on July 1st, here’s my wish list for Lou: Sign Patrik. Sign Gomez. Then grab someone else who puts a lot of accents over their consonants, like Sykora (if the blueshirts want to deal), or better yet, Zdeno Chara (he and Elias played juniors together in the Czech Republic). And if Petr Nedved comes to town, I can hope his wife will wave to me from Section 102.
That’s the end of the management musing for the day. I’m going to shower greetings on the other hockey birthday boy in these parts, the #1 Patrik Elias fan who sports his Czech Republic Hockey hat nearly every day (now neatly autographed by Patty, thanks!), and shares a birthday with his hero. My son turns twelve, a Pee Wee in age and not just in birth year measurement. There’s a strange pseudo-parallelism in the chronology: Patrik Elias came of NHL draft age the same day my son starting counting his age. Happy Birthday to both of you.