The Devils’ leading scorer for five straight seasons doesn’t know if he can return from hepatitis for training camp. He does know he can’t without a new contract.

Patrik Elias is among the host of Devils unsigned for the coming season. Now 29, Elias might just sign a qualifying offer of $4.18 million that would render him an unrestricted free agent after the coming season under terms of the pending collective bargaining agreement.

“I’ll be a restricted free agent [upon CBA ratification], but the first thing on my mind is to get 100 percent healthy and get in shape,” Elias said.

Elias was to make $5.5 million in 2004-05, but the lockout wiped that out. Still, the Devils must qualify Elias at 100 percent, after his 24 percent pay cut, to retain his rights for one last year.

Elias played in the Czech and Russian leagues during the lockout and contracted hepatitis in Moscow in January. He still isn’t sure of the cause: sour seafood, bad water, or infection after the removal of a foot wart, the wound slow to heal.

The effect was a hospital stay and long regimen of rest.

“It’s going better now. The last blood tests were positive, and all the indicators went down,” Elias said. “The last few weeks I’ve been a little active – stretching, walking and breathing. Every day I’m doing more and more.

“But I still have to take it easy and wait until the [test] numbers go to normal. Then you still need a couple of months before you’re 100 percent.”

Always in great shape, sometimes too trim for his own good, Elias faces something new.

“You have to start from the beginning. I was probably in the best shape of my career when it happened,” Elias said. “Now, I get tired after walking 50 feet. I have to go and rest.

“But I have no doubt that I’ll get back to the way I was before.”

It might just take a while.