The hidden agreement behind Tomas Nosek's return to Pardubice

His contract with HC Dynamo Pardubice has been sitting in a drawer since last August.

Dynamo owner Petr Dedek said so publicly, standing on a stage in Pardubice while Nosek held up the Stanley Cup he had just won with the Florida Panthers. Dedek told the crowd the deal was ready whenever Nosek decided he was finished in North America.

Nosek answered him from that same stage, saying he would keep fighting for an NHL job as long as the chance existed.

The chance lasted one more season, and most of it was spent in a training room.

Knee surgery last summer kept him out until March, and 21 games later a fractured fibula against the New York Rangers ended his year.

He finished with two goals and two assists.

That left a 33-year-old bottom-six forward with no healthy audition and a $775,000 contract that had expired. Nobody in the NHL was going to guarantee him anything beyond a camp invitation.

Pardubice guaranteed him everything, in the city where he grew up, on a roster that just won the Czech title.

This is the part worth watching. A Stanley Cup winner with 514 regular-season games never reached the open market, because a European owner asked a year before anyone else did.

Czech clubs are no longer waiting for players to become available, they are booking them in advance.

That is a quiet supply problem for teams building fourth lines out of league-minimum contracts.

Pardubice already added David Tomasek and Matej Stransky this summer, and Nosek makes three.

Dynamo open the Extraliga season on September 16 against Mountfield Hradec Kralove.

He won a Czech title there in 2012 as a 19-year-old, then left after 2013-14 with the club drifting toward relegation rounds. He returns to the defending champion.

Also read on House Of Hockey :
Canada may have found its World Juniors captain - if the Vancouver Canucks release him