Hockey Hall-of-Famer Eric Lindros was a dominant force in his heyday. And in this 2002 story, Lindros told THN about focusing on a gold medal at the Salt Lake City Olympics.
In 2002, superstar Eric Lindros was looking for Olympic gold -- an honor that eluded him at the 1992 Games. But in this Jay Greenberg piece from THN's Feb. 1, 2002 edition, Lindros pulled back the curtain on his Olympic experience. And Lindros' hunger for a gold medal was on complete display,
CANADIAN QUESTION
By Jay Greenberg
Here’s the way it works, once every four years: You score and they wave the flag. You don’t, you get flagged as an utter disgrace.
In Canada, the pursuit of happiness, virtually indistinguishable from the pursuit of the puck, is dead weight on the shoulders of the political prisoners sweating at another Olympiad.
Since there is nothing lower that a Canadian’s estimation of his own selfworth when his best and brightest countrymen fail, Eric Lindros went high on Dominik Hasek and hoped for the best.
“I went forehand to backhand,” Lindros recalls. “And it went off the side of his blocker and the post.”
Five Canadians had chances to match the lone goal by Robert Reichel in the semifinal game shootout against the Czech Republic. Their captain came the closest, which was the farthest thing from what the patriots wanted to hear when Canada lost its shot at the gold. Never mind any of that silver and bronze stuff, which the Canadians obviously didn’t. Carelessly, they lost to the Finns for third place.
No good excuses were ever furnished and when the Americans checked out, neither were some of their rooms, but that’s another scandal for another day.
For here, four years after the cold, hard fact that Lindros hit the post, we only examine the crisis of leadership that his misfortune reflected.
That puck goes in and it’s Cartier, MacDonald and Lindros, no questions ever again asked. But it didn’t, so why the hell did Canada have a 25-year-old captain in Nagano?
“I think if we win that shootout and then the gold medal game there aren’t any questions,” said Lindros. “We didn’t and now we’re retracting steps.
“(The captaincy) wasn’t something I asked for. I was surprised. I was walking into a dressing room that had Wayne Gretzky, Ray Bourque and Steve Yzerman. But I looked at it as a responsibility and something I took to heart. Leadership wasn’t lacking.”
Bourque and Gretzky are retired, as anticipated four years ago, when Canada GM Bob Clarke thought it was time for the game’s next great player to step forward. Of course, because Lindros captained Clarke’s Flyers, things seemed political, but this time there is nothing like that hanging over Lindros’s head, no pun intended, even four concussions later.
Lindros may have fallen out with the Flyers, but he has fallen right back in - hup, two, three, four - proud as ever to march in Canada’s elite hockey army.
After a modest start to the season, Lindros and the Rangers soared through November and December. Then came concussion No. 7, then the sprained right knee. Lindros missed the All-Star Game, but is expected to be ready for Salt Lake.
“Oh, yeah,” he says, asked if the possibility of returning to the Winter Games served as a carrot as big as the resumption of his NHL career. “It’s the biggest stage for hockey.
“It’s not like it’s two weeks to go (before Salt Lake City) and you’ve been thinking about (his Rangers) so much, that your Olympic memory is just kicking in. As soon as Nagano was over, I started thinking when would be the next time we’ll get a shot.
“I had a great time in Nagano, with the exception of the darn shootout. I had a great time in 1992, when I did score in the shootout (against Germany) and we won a (silver) medal.
“They were different experiences. On the way to Albertville (France), we went through five different countries in 11 days by bus. It was like a motor home with hockey equipment. We all lived it the whole year.”
Lindros already knows the Olympics and what he has seen before is what keeps him coming back for more.
“People make all these assumptions that because you’re professionals, we’re there on business. That’s completely overstated. You are there as a hockey player that is part of the Canadian Olympic team. For everybody to feel that spirit, it only takes a couple days, even less when you were there before like I was.
“As far as expectations go, I didn’t see any difference. It’s Canada, it’s hockey and it’s a medal, so that’s constant. In 1992, we weren’t NHL allstars, but we thought we were going to win a gold medal. And we were 1-1 with the Russians (playing as the Unified Team) into the third period. We played pretty well.”
He played well in Nagano too (six points in five games), but all anybody remembers is he hit the post and Gretzky should have had a chance in the shootout. Nobody wanted to hear about any disadvantage on the international ice surface.
Big as it was, it was still only half the size of the disappointment.
Still, with a Ranger contract worth up to $38 million at risk, they couldn’t pay Lindros enough not to take his chances in the next shootout. He couldn’t possibly miss as badly as he missed playing.
And there is no room, over Hasek’s blocker or otherwise, for Lindros to take anything, least of all the chance to compete for a gold medal, for granted. □
“As soon as Nagano was over, I started thinking when would be the next time.