Lindros: a Philadelphia legend or loser?

by Mike Butler

perspectives editor

Eric Lindros' Philadelphia Flyers career: Born 1992, Died 2000.

Looking back on those eight years, I wonder if the Flyers could have done better with someone else. I believe they could have.

Let's look at how Lindros became a Flyer. Lindros, the top prospect in the NHL draft in '91, was originally drafted by the Quebec Nordiques, now the Colorado Avalanche. Lindros, however, had no desire to play in Quebec and told the Nordiques he had no desire to play for them and sat out the entire year. This lead to a mammoth trade between the Flyers and Nordiques that saw Lindros become a Flyer and saw the Flyers part with $15 million, four players, a first-round draft Pick in , 93 and the rights photos from the Eric Undros website to top prospect Peter Forsberg.

Who got the better of the trade? Both the Avalanche and Flyers have made it to the Stanley Cup Finals once since the trade; however, the Avalanche won when they went in '96 while the Flyers lost in '97. As of March 24, Forsberg bas played 459 games in seven seasons and bas racked up 169 goals and 408 assists for 577 points in the regular season. Lindros has played 486 games in eight seasons, scor- ing 290 goals and 369 assists for 659 points. Lindros has the advantage over Forsberg in regular season statistics by 121 goals and 82 assists. But the playoffs are a different story all together. Lindros has played in 50 playoff games scoring 24 goals and earning 33 assists for 57 points. Forsberg, on the other hand, has played in 84 playoff games with 38 goals and 56 assists for 94 points. Clearly we can see that Forsberg is not only more durable than Lindros but he also performs better during the all-important playoffs. Even though Lindros has been known as a dominating player, Forsberg has also garnered great accolades for his play as well.

One could argue that Forsberg played for a better team than Lindros and that is true. The Avalanche have been and still are a better team than the Flyers. One of the big reasons for that is because of the $15 million that the Flyers sent to the Nordiques when they traded for Lindros. Fifteen million dollars isn't a lot in sports like baseball and basketball, but in hockey it is a substantial sum. That money could have been used by the Flyers to build around Forsberg.

Aside from Stanley Cups, Lindros does have an edge over Forsberg in terms of awards. In 1995, Lindros won the Hart Memorial Trophy as the league's MVP and the Lester B. Pearson Award as MVP as selected by the players. In that same year, Forsberg won the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year. Also, in '95, Lindros was tied with Jaormir Jagr as the league's leading scorer, but the Art Ross Trophy for being the top scorer in the NHL went to Jagr because be had more goals than Lindros.

But what puts Forsberg ahead of Lindros is maturity. After Lindros turned down the $8.5 million offer sheet from the Flyers, he then handcuffed the Flyers by saying not only wouldn't he play for the Flyers again, but that he would only play for Toronto. Toronto couldn't muster up the right deal and so as the trade deadline approached Lin- dros all of a sudden widened his selection of teams. If Lindros had kept his mouth shut about where he wanted to go, he might have ended up on another team by now and actually playing hockey instead of sitting in Canada doing nothing. Instead, Lindros has decided to sit out for the second time in his career. So far, Forsberg has not even come close to causing a fraction of the problems that Lindros has.

Whether Forsberg could have brought a Stanley Cup to Philadelphia is irrelevant. What matters is that Forsberg could have provided just as much as Lindros did with exponentially less headaches for the team and at a lower cost as well.