Eric Lindros' career comes full circle with Hockey Hall of Fame induction

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He scored his first goal as a Flyer in October 1992.
 
Two years later, he was named team captain. By 1995, he had won the Hart Trophy for NHL MVP at the age of 22.
 
Three years later, he became the fifth fastest player to score 500 points (just 352 games), following in the skates of Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Peter Stastny and Mike Bossy.
 
Monday night in Toronto, Eric Lindros, the second-greatest centerman in Flyers history behind Bobby Clarke, takes his rightful place in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
 
“Look at the names on the plaques,” Lindros said Friday afternoon in Toronto at the Hockey Hall of Fame luncheon. “Just being in here. Jeez, it's the cream of the crop. It's a real honor to be part of this.”
 
Clarke, Bill Barber, Mark Howe and current general manager Ron Hextall will all be on hand for the induction occasion this evening.
 
“The impact he had — his size, his skill, skating ability, his physicality and how he could take over a game was incredible,” Flyers president Paul Holmgren said.  
 
“He’s within our top-five players ever, right up there after Clarkie, Bernie [Parent] and Bill [Barber] and those three were in a league of their own.”
 
When he arrived in Philadelphia in 1992 after signing an unprecedented — at the time — five-year, $22.96 million contract, Lindros quipped, “This is like paradise.”
 
For a while, it truly was as he became the most dominant power forward of his generation.
 
“Eric’s physical presence, combined with his powerful skating and overall ability put him heads above the rest,” former teammate Rod Brind’Amour said.
 
At 6-foot-4, 240 pounds, he was among the biggest players ever to lace up the skates, and when he moved on the ice, he brought momentum like few players before him.
 
“What can you say about Eric other than he was the dominant player when he came into the league?” Maple Leafs general manager Lou Lamoriello said this past weekend.

Lamoriello was the general manager of the Devils during Lindros’ peak years.
 
“Eric was a force," Lamoriello said. "Someone you were aware of every time you stepped on the ice. He could singlehandedly change the game. Power and strength and skating, he had the whole package.
 
“We had many, many nights, the playoffs, the battles, the brawls and the relationship with [Ed] Snider, Clarke and Homer never wilted and then the puck dropped it was different.”
 
Because Lindros towered over his peers, he developed a terrible habit in junior of skating with his head down and barreling over people.
 
That fateful tendency was Lindros’ only flaw. Tragically, it would become the reason why his NHL career was cut well short of 1,000 games, as he was hit repeatedly while skating that way and suffered head trauma leading to post-concussion syndrome.
 
“Unfortunately, his career ended as short as it did,” Holmgren said. “To me, he could have been like [Jaromir] Jagr and gone on if he had remained reasonably healthy just because of his ability.”
 
Lindros' brilliant Flyers career ended in Game 7 of the 2000 Eastern Conference Final against the New Jersey Devils. Scott Stevens caught him on the chin with his head down 7:50 into the first period as Lindros crossed the blue line.
 
“I had seen many of those hits by Scotty over the years and Scotty played the game the way the game should be played — physical and clean,” Lamoriello said.
 
“Opponents knew when he was on the ice and it was their responsibility to be aware of it. Keep your head up. When that happened, I thought to myself, ‘This could be the series.’ You never want to see anyone hurt and always hope the player comes back. It didn’t happen.”
 
Stevens said afterward it took him a long time to get over that hit. Lindros, who would take the next season off with post-concussion syndrome, then refused to the return to the Flyers and was never the same player even after he was traded to the Rangers.
 
He admitted the hit made him wary of coming up the middle of the ice in the twilight of his career.
 
Most Flyers fans prefer to remember the years prior to 2000 when he dominated the league and was relatively healthy — four of his six concussions as a Flyer came in 2000.
 
How the club dealt with those injuries vs. how Lindros’ father/agent Carl Lindros wanted them handled became the grounds for the long-standing feud between the two parties that divided a fan base.
 
“My only memory of Lindros was listening to Clarkie talk about how great he could have been while the veins popped out of his neck,” Kings GM Dean Lombardi said.
 
It wasn’t until only a few years ago that the two sides seemed to reconcile, and even now, Lindros says all that is in the past and he has only good memories of the franchise.
 
Ironically, it was Clarke’s participation on the Hockey Hall of Fame selection committee that ultimately led to Lindros' induction after being passed over six previous times.
 
“Eric deserves to be in the Hall of Fame,” Clarke told CSN several years ago before he joined the committee.
 
Lindros’ injuries helped bring post-concussion syndrome into the spotlight in sports, which is why people have come to see him in an entirely new light than they did back in 2002 when he refused to re-sign with the Flyers.
 
“It was something in those days we didn’t have the knowledge that we have today,” Lamoriello said in defense of how hockey viewed post-concussion syndrome.
 
By the final season of his Flyers career, Lindros ranked in the Flyers’ top 10 in goals (290), assists (369), points (659), power-play goals (82) and hat tricks (11). His 1.36 points a game remains a franchise record.
 
“His comparison blows a lot of guys out of the water,” former linemate John LeClair said.
 
Lindros averaged 1.14 points per game overall during his 13 NHL seasons. Peter Forsberg, the centerpiece Swede who was part of the original Lindros trade with Quebec, averaged 1.25 points a game.
 
“You can shut down a really good finesse player,” former Flyer Rick Tocchet said. “But it’s really hard to shut down a skilled player who has power and strength — Eric had all those tools to dictate how the game was going to be played and he tilted the game in your favor.”
 
Lindros' "Legion of Doom" line with LeClair and Mikael Renberg was together for 5½ seasons.
 
The Legion of Doom had two memorable seasons under head coach Terry Murray, with a record 255 points in 1995-96 and 235 points in 1996-97, the only year the line skated together in a Stanley Cup Final.
 
“John, Mikael and I were a pretty special group,” Lindros once said. “We set up one another and we certainly enjoyed playing with one another and being together on and off the ice. It really was a special group to be involved with.
 
“We were a pretty confident bunch. Certainly, there were some times that it didn’t turn out that way. But we’d like to think that overall we had a pretty good positive effect on the outcome of our games.”
 
Monday, it culminates with Lindros’ induction in the Hockey Hall of Fame.
 
“He is getting rewarded and rightly so,” Lamoriello said. “It’s a tremendous honor for him. It shows the type of player and career he had.”

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