NO PLAYER in the NHL has suffered a steeper de cline in his game over the past three years than Patrik Elias, not so long ago one of the league’s elite forwards, but now simply a pedestrian performer whose deterioration has undermined the Devils as much as all those free-agent defections since the lockout.
Lou Lamoriello is facing a crossroads decision, whether to trade for a name goaltender who might stabilize the situation during Martin Brodeur’s lengthy rehab from elbow surgery, or to ride out the immediate storm with Kevin Weekes and Scott Clemmensen and evaluate again once people like Brian Rolston and Bobby Holik come off injured reserve.
And then, Lamoriello no doubt will face another evaluation as the March 4 trade deadline approaches, whether to make moves for a playoff run, or to become sellers for the first time in a generation by offering impending free agents John Madden and Brian Gionta as rentals in return for bailout packages.
Even if the Devils do acquire an interim No. 1, that will not address the team’s underlying issue of underperformance from Elias, who dominated shifts and games on his own – and well after Jason Arnott and Petr Sykora were sent away.
Elias scored 35 or more goals in three of the five years immediately preceding the lockout and got 16 in 38 games in 2005-06 after missing the first half of the season with hepatitis. But he slipped to 21 in 2006-07, 20 in 2007-08, and has seven this season after scoring twice in last night’s 6-5 shootout victory over the Caps in Newark against the Caps. Too often, though, he is invisible where once he was dynamic. And he is just 32 years old.
He began to slip in the first season of the seven-year, $42M contract he signed that includes a no-move clause unprecedented in Devils history. Elias got the no-move clause because Lamoriello didn’t want him going to the Rangers, who had offered six years at $42M, but without a no-move or no-trade guarantee.
So now the Devils, who also must contend with a woefully underachieving Gionta (a franchise record 48-goal 2005-06, followed by 25-, 22- and now two-goal outputs) have Elias, who had his captaincy stripped last season by coach Brent Sutter, was denigrated at times last year by Sutter, was moved from the wing into the middle and back, with four more years on this killer deal and with no way out.
No way out, that is, unless Elias agrees to go, and without any of the coercive and degrading tactics used by the amateur- hour bunch in Tampa that ultimately convinced Dan Boyle to pack up and leave for San Jose.
Maybe Chicago, which offered Elias over $8M per when he be came a free agent in 2006, would be a match. Maybe the opportunity to play at least the remainder of this sea son with Martin Havlat, his longtime best friend, would provide incentive for Elias to go. Maybe the opportu nity to jump-start his career under Joel Quenneville, under whom big- time Euro peans have thrived, would provide incen tive, as well.
The pipeline has gone dry in New Jersey. Brodeur’s injury, while im mediately trau matic, may provide an opportunity for Lamoriello to take that one step back today in order to take those two steps forward tomorrow that he always talks about.
Maybe the Devils go into the market as sellers – sellers of assets named Madden, Gionta . . . and Elias.
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Dysfunction in Tampa? Who would have expected that from a front-office operation that makes the Mike Milbury Era on the Island a model of stability?
So Jarkko Ruutuu races across the ice to throw an elbow/shoulder at the head of an unsuspecting Maxim Lapierre and gets two games for his trouble while Thomas Pock gets five for planting an elbow in Ryan Shannon‘s face after getting beaten one-on-one.
Explain, please, the unexplainable.
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Finally, from Page Six. Which marquee player who is all about the team in the newspapers has been bringing his wife on road trips without the knowledge of his coach or GM?