Eric Lindros – Toronto Maple Leafs and the Shocking Non-Trade

August 11, 2005, was a special day. The Toronto Maple Leafs acquired one of the best to ever lace up a pair of skates, Eric Lindros. It only happened years after a mega trade fell through that would have brought the two sides together.

16 years ago today, the Toronto Maple Leafs were able to add the legend and Hall of Famer, Eric Lindros. What remains from that time is only a sad reminder of what could have been, including a trade that the Maple Leafs thought was done.

We will cover Lindros’s career, his medical history, his falling out with the Flyers, the trade that everyone in the hockey world thought was complete, and finally, what happened when he joined the Leafs.

For those that aren’t familiar with Lindros, he was dominant. Picture LeBron James on ice. Lindros was a big body at 6’4” 240 pounds who had no problem plowing through his opponents. He used his excellent skating to beat players to the puck and his physicality to flatten them on the glass.

The centerman was also a prolific scorer. He had four seasons where he registered over 40 goals and was in the NHL’s top 10 for goals scored four times. He was also in the top 10 in assists three times. In each of his first nine seasons, he was better than a point a game. In short, Lindros was remarkable.

Surprisingly, Lindros’s best season wasn’t 1994-95 when he was named a First Team All-Star and won both the Hart Trophy and the Ted Lindsay Award. That season, he recorded 29 goals and 41 assists for a total of 70 points in just 46 games. That was a pace of 1.52 points per game. As good as that was, his best season was one year later.

At age 22, in 1995-96, Lindros registered an outstanding 115 points in 73 games. He scored 47 goals and had 68 assists. That was an impressive 1.58 points per game. For comparison’s sake, Auston Matthews’s best points per game average was 1.27, which he had this past season.

When the Toronto Maple Leafs came inches from swinging a deal for Lindros and when they signed him to play at age 32, he had already had multiple concussions, which significantly limited his games played. Sadly, he was on the receiving end of some crushing blows. (stats hockeydb.com).

A History of Concussions

The most unfortunate part of Lindros’s career was that he was hurt so many times. Concussions weren’t the only thing that limited his time but it was the most common.

The first concussion came in March of 1998 when a check from Darius Kasparaitis forced Lindros to miss 18 games. He came back and stayed healthy for nine months. That changed when the Philadelphia Flyers played the Calgary Flames. After center Jason Wiemer violently checked Lindros into the boards, he sustained a mild concussion.

In January of 2000, the Big E was concussed for the third time. It came when he was hit by an elbow while playing the Atlanta Thrashers. The fourth concussion was sustained in March that year. This time he suffered a Grade II concussion when he was checked by former Toronto Maple Leafs defenseman, then playing with the Boston Bruins, Hal Gill. Exactly two months later, a collision with Francis Lessard in practice gave Lindros his fifth concussion.

His very next concussion was from the famous open-ice hit delivered by Scott Stevens. It came after Lindros had returned to the Flyers lineup for the 2000 Eastern Conference finals after a 10-week absence. He made it back in time to play in Game 6 where he scored the Flyer’s only goal. Lindros got through that game unscathed but was leveled by Stevens in Game 7. The impact was so brutal that it forced the London, Ontario native to spend the night in the hospital and spend months rehabbing.

The Toronto Maple Leafs Trade That Wasn’t

The relationship between the Flyers and their star player was rapidly deteriorating in 2000. After Lindros’s fourth concussion he was openly critical of his team’s training and medical staff. He was unhappy that he was still playing with concussions symptoms and that team doctors didn’t properly diagnose him for weeks.

In response to the star’s public criticism, Flyers general manager Bob Clarke stripped Lindros of the Flyers’ captaincy. Clarke had some stern words for his former captain. He said “I believe he has to apologize to the people that he attacked personally — their honesty, their integrity, their work ethic.” Clark went on to explain that “The players aren’t happy with what he’s done. He has to make peace with his teammates as well.”

At that time, Clarke spoke to the Courier Times about the falling out between the Flyers and their former captain. He pointed a finger directly at Lindros’s parents.

“The problems have never come from me or the Flyers,” Clarke said. “They’ve always been started, instigated, and pursued by Eric and his dad and mom. If Carl (Lindros’s father and agent) wants to try to run our organization, tell us who to trade, and all this kind of stuff, then we don’t need Eric. We’ll get on without him. Ideally, we want Eric to come back and be a player on our team. We don’t need him to be a leader, we just need him to be a player.” (From ESPN.com).

With this dispute happening in public, Lindros rejected Philadelphia’s qualifying offer of $8.5 million. The contract that was presented to him as a restricted free agent was a two-way qualifying offer, which meant that Lindros could have been sent down to the minors.

Lindros let the Flyers know that he would rather sit out than play for them. He made it clear that he wanted his rights traded. When Lindros was cleared to play again in November, he wasted no time letting the public know exactly what he was thinking. Just one day after a Chicago doctor signed off on him resuming his playing career, Lindros announced that he would only accept a trade to the Toronto Maple Leafs.

It appeared as though Clarke was bitter over this very public drama and he took his time to begin negotiating with the Leafs. It wasn’t until Feb. 7, 2001, that Clarke told the Leafs what the Flyers would be willing to accept in exchange for Lindros.

On Feb. 19, the Leafs’ board of governors approved the deal that would bring number 88 to Toronto. The organization was excited to be acquiring this high-impact player. That feeling lasted just one day. On Feb. 20, Maple Leafs coach and general manager Pat Quinn announced that the Flyers pulled out of the deal. The very next day, Quinn announced that the deal was dead.

What Went Down

Quinn publicly acknowledged that he acquiesced to all of the Flyers trade demands. There were reports at the time that the Maple Leafs were going to give up Nik Antropov, Danny Markov, and a first-round draft pick. Quinn believed that the deal was done.

How close was it? The Leafs had a contract agreement in place with Lindros, who was already in Toronto working out. Quinn even phoned the NHL league office to confirm the details of the swap and had set up a news conference to announce the completion of the deal to the media.

That’s when Clarke decided he’d push to swap out Markov for Tomas Kaberle in the trade. Clarke explained that even though Quinn thought that there was an agreement in place, there wasn’t.    (From CBC.com).

Frustrated by Clarke and the way he operated, Quinn told the media that he was through dealing with the Flyers. As a result, there was no action for Lindros. He missed an entire season of play by the time the Flyers finally traded him. On August 20, 2001, the New York Rangers got Lindros in exchange for a third-round draft pick in 2003 (used to select Stefan Ruzicka), Pavel Brendl, Jan Hlavac, and Kim Johnsson.