NHL

MADDEN, GIONTA WAIT ON DEVILS

The re-signing window is already open, but the Devils have not started preventing it from becoming their too-familiar barn door out.

Lou Lamoriello has yet to offer contract extensions to keep John Madden and Brian Gionta from unrestricted free agency next summer, and the Devils don’t have the greatest track record of retaining key players who finally reach UFA – Scott Gomez, Brian Rafalski, Scott Niedermayer, Joe Nieuwendyk, Bobby Holik, to name a few.

Teams are prohibited from extending contracts until their final seasons, and both Gionta and Madden are now eligible.

Madden – perhaps the team’s finest performer last season – stands to be only the ninth highest-paid Devil this season at $2.9 million, finishing a five-year deal signed before the 2004 lockout. The resulting CBA cut his pay 24 percent for the long-term duration.

Gionta will be completing a three-year contract of $4 million each. Although he is believed to have been part of the Devils’ failed bid to rent Marian Hossa at the trade deadline, the team might do well to remember that the last time he was in the final year of his contract, regarded as the league’s best bargain at 627G, he set the team record of 48 goals.

“It’s early,” Madden said yesterday at the Devils’ Alumni Golf Tournament at Upper Montclair CC. “I’m open to anything. I’d like to stay.”

Gionta’s agent has expressed similar sentiments of patience. Gionta has endured two disappointing seasons since his record of 2005-06 and remains a subject of trade rumors. The Devils, however, would be guilty of trading him at the bottom of his value, while risking little by keeping him in case of a resurgence.

Madden, 35, insisted that the major hit he took from the CBA on his current deal – four seasons of 24 percent off, opposed to none for those signing after the lockout, with salaries thereafter skyrocketing – wouldn’t be incentive to strike it rich in what may be his last big contract.

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Rod Pelley reiterated confidence that he will soon be signed out of restricted free agency, with Lamoriello agreeing with that sentiment. . . . Devils vets report Sept. 19 for physicals.

mark.everson@nypost.com