Patrik Eliáš

Dallas. Those green and black jerseys. Derian Hatcher, who you really didn't want to meet in the corner of a hockey rink. One of the strongest teams in the 1990s. A place where I first touched the Stanley Cup, and the team that I almost joined several times.

Maybe.

Lou Lamoriello, who for almost thirty years was the most important figure in New Jersey, and who was my boss for almost my entire career, had a lot of specific characteristics as a GM. One of them was that you never knew if he was considering you for a trade. Never. Whenever he was preparing something, the team had no idea. In the whole NHL, anyone that wanted to do business with Lou had to keep it fair and keep it a secret. If anything leaked to the public before completion, the trade was off.

A couple of times, I heard about a possible trade, that was probably serious. However, I always heard from journalists, from my agent, or from Czech guys on other teams. "Hey, you are joining us," they occasionally told me on the phone. And then I’d immediately hear the other name involved in the trade.

Most often, these rumors were about Dallas, where we played a tough and victorious playoff series for the Stanley Cup in 2000. They were coached by Ken Hitchcock, who liked my game, based on the rumors. No trade was ever made. Lou never even mentioned it to me. Maybe he always found out that someone had called beforehand.

In fact, I left New Jersey for only a few days during my entire NHL career: in the summer of 2006, when my contract expired and I became a free agent. Lou never discussed a new contract with me at the end of the season. He just wished me good luck. He told me that there were many clubs interested in my services and they would offer me an adequate salary, more than was possible with the Devils. 

I was prepared to go elsewhere, but I did not prepare well for the free market. I didn’t know exactly what it was all about, and instead of sitting in my agent's office (Allan Walsh) where I could see all the possibilities and offers from the clubs, I stayed in Prague and I didn't sleep until 6 in the morning. I was on the phone, talking with my wife, what to do next, calling my parents a few times, unable to make a decision that would, in a few moments, change my future for several years.

There were several interested clubs, but in the end it was about two teams, Los Angeles and the Rangers. With the Rangers, I went the furthest. We agreed on the salary and the length of the contract, but we didn’t agree on one amendment. I requested a no-trade clause. Once I signed this deal to play for the devils’ biggest rival, I wanted to be sure that I would stay for a while before moving again. Glen Sather, the Rangers' general manager at the time, didn't agree, and at one point I picked up the phone and dialed a well-known number.

"Lou, how is it going? Are you interested in a contract extension?" I asked.

I immediately received a drafted contract exactly according to my requirements. I did not understand why we didn’t speak a word for a whole year on the topic, and then, within five minutes, the proposal that I had been willing to sign was in front of me. Maybe he was just waiting for my call.

I signed it.

At that moment, I knew where I would play for the next seven years. And since I was 30, I thought to myself that the future was clear. I started playing for the Devils and I was going to end my career playing for the Devils. It would be nice to finish it there. 

When my daughters were born, I appreciated this possibility even more. More than ever, I wanted to know what it meant to be involved in a particular community where I had experienced so much, to fully appreciate what New Jersey represented to me and what I represented to New Jersey. I became a part of a big family, a player who was appreciated for his loyalty by the fans, not like someone, whatever level, who came for a few seasons and continued elsewhere.

At the very end of my career, I was still toying with the idea of playing for another team, just to experience what it was like playing for a Canadian club or in Detroit. I have always liked the Detroit hockey concept. I almost signed my last contract with them, but it wasn’t a good bargain.

So I left hockey as a Devils player. I played there for over twelve hundred games. I had 1,205 points over 20 years, and more than a million experiences. It was my pleasure, dear New Jersey.

I didn't even know what the NHL was. The first time I ever realized that there was such a league was when we traveled to Camrose, Canada  to play in the Viking Cup, a tournament of selected American and European teams. At first, we looked at the local teams, mostly made up of older and stronger guys, with respect and a little fear, but we quickly realized an interesting fact: We played smarter. We could handle them.

Moreover, I was astonished by the smaller ice rink. It seemed to suit me when the game was faster. I was enjoying every moment.

They took us to Edmonton, where Vláďa Vůjtek and Petr Klíma were playing at the time. They introduced us to them and we were totally fascinated. I was fascinated by the big stadium, lots of people, amazing hockey and also by the West Edmonton Mall, a huge mall with a roller coaster, dolphins, a water park and an ice rink.

I wanted to live there. I want to play there once, I swore. Suddenly I had a clear goal of what I wanted.

At the age of 13, in Třebíč, it was clear that hockey was the right path when my friend Michal Mikeska and I started to excel. So my parents and I worked on the next step. My two older brothers also played hockey, but one was seriously injured and lost his kidney playing hockey. They pushed me to move somewhere where I could improve. But where?

In Brno, the club level was declining. In Jihlava, they told me that they had enough players. The only option remaining was Kladno, which was recommended to us by my brother's friend who played there. Mr. Slánský, the head of the local youth team, came personally to offer me a transfer.

I won't lie, I didn't want to go that far. It was clear to me that I would miss my family. And yes, I introduced myself as a crying sucker who was homesick all the time. Back then, it was not possible to call home just like today. There was only other player from Moravia in the club, Láďa Kohn from Uherské Hradiště, a year older, who understood what I was going through and helped me a lot. I could only go to Třebíč once a month. A journey into space seemed easier, because I left on Friday night after the games to chase a train to Prague, Dejvice. From there, I took a subway to Florenc and once there, I was either lucky to catch a bus to Jihlava or straight to Třebíč, or I had to take a train to Pardubice and there change to another train to Jihlava.

They were unbelievable trips. I got home in the early morning and had to go back the next day. I don't understand how I managed to find my way, as a little boy, at all those stations.

In Kladno, we all attended a vocational school and were placed in the same “hockey” classroom. Until the age of 18, we had to live in a school residence hall, which was simply terrible. During the general cleaning, we occasionally saw mice run down the hall. We were looked after by tutors on each floor, and one of them, an elderly lady, was getting a hard time from all those teenage boys. She was suffering, I felt sorry for her. We used to have training until half past 9, we came back to our rooms at half past 10 and there was no more hot water. Every other week, we woke up at quarter to 5 in the morning, because we were going by bus to Poldovka, where we learned the basics of metallurgy.

Honestly, I never liked manual work and there I started to hate it. I was lucky not to lose my arm because one of my teammates, a talented boy from Kralupy, wound up a plate on a drill and his first reaction was to catch it. Of course, he slit his palm completely, with a lot of blood everywhere. His hockey career was over.

We were always looking forward to snack time at nine o’clock. Although nothing a nutritionist would be happy about, for us it was the best time away from work. We enjoyed loads of meatballs there. The grilled chickens from a stall in the square, which we completely loved, were probably not much better.

My last year in Kladno, I enjoyed culinary experiences when we lived together with Tomáš Vokoun and Pavel Trnka in an apartment. Tomas was a trained chef and he cooked for us if we had money to buy the ingredients. As we started to earn money, we received individual education plans at school and after training with the A- team, we had more time. Sometimes, we went to play the slot machines. It was a Kladno specialty; slot machines were favored by most of the local guys and we younger guys didn’t want to stay behind. That's why we had months when we ate only instant soup with rolls. We had no money for anything else.

Fortunately, I didn't become addicted to slot machines and my hockey skills improved. My first two years with the junior team, led by Mr. Šindler, I played immediately on the first line with the older boys, Béda Carvan and Zdenda Kudrna. They also chose me for the national team, where I played steadily with Venca Varaďa and Pepík Marha. I had fantastic years with them. If I don’t count the seasons in New Jersey alongside Jason Arnott and Pete Sýkora, this was the best offensive team I've ever been a part of. We were incredibly successful, we scored a lot of goals and we won every tournament until the U-18 championship, where we didn't make the final and finished third. 

But the Kladno A-team was not meant for me.It was ruled by boys only a few years older than me, Patera, Procházka, Vejvoda, Gardoň, Zajíc or Veber. They played great hockey and I was just one of the other young people who was trying to make it. Although I trained with them from the age of 17, I didn't get much of a chance to play. They let me on the ice for a few minutes or I sat on the bench. I saw Péťa Sýkora in Pilsen, one year younger, but playing every game between adults there, and I wondered why they wouldn't give me a chance as well. I was annoyed Coach Neliba was fine, but his assistant, Mr. Müller, didn't like me very much. Once I made a mistake, he always pointed it out.

"He's awful, let him sit on the bench," I heard him say behind me from the bench.

Nevertheless, I attracted the attention of Honza Ludwig, a former offensive player and at that time a Devils scout. He liked me on the national team and he later told me that he went to see me three times in the first division and I never played. Twice, I sat on the bench and for the third time during a warmup before the game in Pardubice, I broke a glass door and cut a vein in my hand, so they took me to the hospital. He always had to report that I looked good during a warm-up, but still, he supported me and New Jersey drafted me. My NHL dream was closer, although not everyone liked it.

I've always been the second smallest in the class. By the end of elementary school, my height was a hundred and sixty centimeters. Small, thin, skin and bone. 

"What the guy wants to do out there, he is too weak to do," one of Třebíč's coaches said about me when I left for Kladno.  But none of those who talked about me like that knew my true nature. In my mind, centimeters and kilograms didn’t play  a role. Everything was driven by my competitiveness and the need to cope with my older brothers. From an early age, we played hockey together behind our house, and I never wanted to be the last one.

On top of that, our dad always pushed us to do something more than the others. In the mountains, we ran up a ski slope, close to our house, up the stairs. Once, my dad didn't like how I played during a  youth game, so he dropped me off on the way from Jihlava and I ran behind the car the whole long hill towards Brtnice. And when I didn’t behave when I was 13, because I thought I was the smartest, my dad jumped down from the stands to the bench, slapped me over my helmet and told me to undress because we were going home immediately.

"Zdeněk, don't be silly. We still have a tournament to play," the coaches tried to tell him.

"No, he won't behave like that," he replied, and we really left.

It didn't help much. I was being an ass mainly to my teammates when something went wrong. I yelled at them because I wanted to win, and I felt like they were spoiling it. I hated when something didn't go the way I wanted. And most of all, I hated defeats.