NY Post · Apr 2, 2017
How two trades pushed Patrik Elias into Devils immortality
For years they had been inseparable, off the ice and on the ice, where they made magic as sweet as any set of NHL matched-pair wingers have in a very, very long time, and in the mind’s eye of the hockey universe.
But after a while, Patrik Elias yearned for independence from his friend Petr Sykora; yearned to be known as an independent entity and for his own identity. He had, after all, earned that.
And so it was early in the 2002-03 season that I approached Elias, whom I had known since he first joined the Devils as a 19-year-old back in 1995. Sykora had been traded the previous offseason. I started a question, “Petr…”
Elias interrupted me.
“I’m Patrik,” he said.
He most certainly was.