Big 88 Takes Challenges In Stride Lindros Won’t Back Down From Intimidators During Quest For Cup

During the Eastern Conference finals of the Stanley Cup playoffs, big, tough talented Eric Lindros of the Philadelphia Flyers grew displeased with the New York Rangers when Luc Robitaille held him against the boards early in Game 1 and Esa Tikkanen later collided with him at full speed in the middle of the ice.

Grabbing Robitaille in one fist and Tikkanen with the other, Lindros climbed to the top of the Empire State Building and flung them both toward the Statue of Liberty, knocking off her crown with Robitaille and her torch with Tikkanen.

At least it seemed that way. Careful review of videotape, however, showed that Lindros merely fell on Robitaille in a deliberate way that drove Robitaille’s face into the ice and left him dazed and bleeding. As for Tikkanen, he simply bounced off Lindros and crashed to the ice.

Despite intense defensive attention, Lindros scored five goals in five games against the Rangers and has 11 in 15 tournament games against three opponents. Having won the Hart Trophy as most valuable player in the National Hockey League in 1995, this combative 24-year-old superstar is on the verge of engraving his name on another cherished award.

If the Flyers beat the Detroit Red Wings in the finals, beginning Saturday night in Philadelphia, their names will be listed on the silver side of the Stanley Cup. Lindros also might contend for the Conn Smythe trophy as most valuable player in the postseason.

After five seasons of erratic spurts of success, injuries and controversy, Lindros seems poised to join superstars like Mario Lemieux, Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier as captains of championship teams.

There is a sense this spring that the hockey world is witnessing the passing of a torch and the inheritance of a crown.

“There were times, I wouldn’t say you doubt yourself, but things look a little foggy,” Lindros said, referring to the season. “We’ve got things cleared up now and here we are.”

And there he is. Lemieux, almost as big as Lindros and possessing similar shooting and passing skills, retired after the Flyers eliminated the Pittsburgh Penguins in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals. In the handshake line, he told Lindros it now was his time. Messier, who plays with a Lindros-like mean streak, told Lindros “go get it” after the Flyers eliminated the Rangers.

Although Lindros modeled his style after Messier’s, he is 12 years younger. At 6-foot-4 and 236 pounds, Lindros is 3 inches taller and 31 pounds heavier. More than any player, Lindros hits opponents with the force and aggression of a football player while moving the puck with the delicacy of a golf pro.

“No one can play with his size, which he combines with great skill,” Messier said. “It separates him from anybody who played this game.”

Other things separate him as well. Traditionally Canadian in many of his hockey attitudes, Lindros refused twice, at a young age, to conform to the business practices of his sport and culture. When drafted as a teenager and told to move hundreds of miles from his suburban Toronto home to play for a junior team in northern Ontario, Lindros and his parents refused, forcing a trade to a team closer to them.

When drafted as a professional and told to play for the Nordiques, a team in a small city in the French-speaking province of Quebec, Lindros and his parents refused. He waited one season and forced a trade to the Flyers, who won rights to him in arbitration with the Rangers.

The influence of Carl and Bonnie Lindros, although less visible, is still noticeable. It is common to see one or the other near the dressing room door after their son’s games in various cities.

“I’m very proud,” Carl Lindros said. “I’m proud of a number of things. I’m almost relieved, from Eric’s perspective, that he has had a chance to blossom.”

Was he worried that his son would crack or break under the strain?

“I’m not sure we ever thought he would crack or break,” Carl Lindros said. “I think we could see life is much more complicated than what it first appeared and that there were limits to how much weight a single person could put on their shoulders.”

Even at age 24, Lindros still comes across as hockey’s dark manchild.

Unlike the glib Messier, the calculating Gretzky and even the taciturn Lemieux, Lindros seems to lack confidence when speaking in public, particularly before large groups, such as the reporters who questioned him Thursday after the Flyers practiced in Voorhees, N.J. Formally polite, he seemed nervous, his feet fidgeting, his voice wavering, his arms crossed over his chest.

Asked about retaliation to cheap shots, Lindros replied: “Everyone has made a big deal about retaliation. I don’t think there has been any retaliating or stuff like that. Throughout the playoffs, it’s not a big issue with me.”

It is a sign of his increased maturity that Lindros no longer responds to every provocation with the kind of reaction that results in a penalty that takes him off the ice.

But resisting the temptation is always a big challenge. More than most players, Lindros plays as if he enjoys giving and taking punishment. It won’t be too much of a stretch for some Canadians to cast Lindros as a single combat warrior against the representatives of what used to be Canada’s bitterest hockey rival. Detroit features a group called “The Russian Five” - including a rugged defenseman named Vladimir Konstantinov. The Lindros-Konstantinov matchup is the sort of thing that sharp television directors will isolate with their cameras.

“He wants to get under anybody’s skin,” Lindros said of Konstantinov. “He wants to take your head off. He wants to be in your face.” In a game earlier this season, when they collided along the boards, it was Konstantinov who left the game on shaky legs.

Often in his young career Lindros has been surrounded by hostility and menace, some of it his own creation. Five years ago, in his first game in Quebec City, after rejecting the Nordiques, rookie Lindros played before an angry crowd that threw diapers and pacifiers at him while chanting obscenities in French-accented English.

Despite a Nordiques victory, Lindros scored two goals, had an apparent goal overruled and hit the post on another shot. This is the sort of athlete who creates pressure for himself and thrives amid it. But none of his challenges have had the pressure, attention and prize of this next round. The entire hockey world will closely watch Big 88 - even his numerals are huge - to see if his moment of ultimate triumph is at hand.