ELITE STREET | By Bob Goldsborough | Bucking a recent trend of former Chicago Blackhawks players listing their area homes and leaving town, retired Blackhawks winger Eric Daze has paid $1.68 million for a newly built, six-bedroom, New Orleans four-square house in Hinsdale. He also has a contract to sell his longtime four-bedroom house in Hinsdale, which has been listed for $795,000.

A 2002 league MVP who spent his entire 11-year NHL career with the Blackhawks, Daze, 35, was permanently sidelined in 2005 after chronic back problems.

A longtime homeowner in Hinsdale, Daze has traded up to a 12-room stucco house that had been listed for $1.899 million when he closed on the purchase on Mar. 18. Features include 5-1/2 baths, gas lanterns that flank the front entrance, a foyer with a barrel-vaulted ceiling, hardwood floors, oversized millwork, a family room with a limestone fireplace, a mud room with lockers, a finished lower level with a bedroom, and a kitchen with custom cabinets, top-of-the-line appliances and Carrara marble. Classified as a “green home,” the house has low-flow plumbing, a tankless water heater, and energy-efficient windows and appliances.

Daze paid $665,000 in 1999 to purchase the nine-room house that he now is trying to sell. Built in 1998, that house has 4-1/2 baths, hardwood floors on three levels, custom cherry cabinetry, a new family room, and a finished lower level.

Daze’s real estate agent in both transactions, Ann Reidy Smith of County Line Properties, declined to comment on either one.