By Rob Riches, Sports Talk Philly contributor
Aside from their first-round playoff upset over Pittsburgh, if there's one thing to remember from the 2011-12 Flyers season, it's the mending of fences between the organization and one-time franchise player Eric Lindros.
With the Flyers hosting the New York Rangers for the annual NHL Winter Classic on New Year's Day 2012, Lindros' return for the previous day's Alumni Game grabbed headlines all across the NHL realm. He and Bob Clarke would have their opportunity to bury the hatchet after their acrimonious divorce a decade prior. Several months later, Lindros joined the Flyers on the ice for a morning skate at Air Canada Centre, at the invitation of then-GM Paul Holmgren.
According to a report from TSN's Frank Seravalli, there was a lot more to Lindros' seemingly-innocuous morning skate. It was all part of a plan to bring Lindros back, and give him one last shot at a Stanley Cup. From the report:
Now that ‘Big E’ will finally be enshrined in the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday, the statute of limitations has long since expired on a story that would have sent reverberations throughout Philadelphia and the NHL.
“Yeah, I did place a call to Eric in 2012 to see whether he would consider coming back,” Flyers president Paul Holmgren said Thursday. “He looked that good at the outdoor alumni game. I thought he could help our team.”
Holmgren wasn’t exactly sure on the timing of the offer, but it was definitely after the Flyers-Rangers alumni game at Citizens Bank Park on December 31, 2011.
It didn’t seem like an outlandish idea. Part of Holmgren’s thinking came from watching Jaromir Jagr, who is one year older than Lindros, rack up 54 points that season on a line with Claude Giroux and Scott Hartnell after a three-year hiatus in Russia’s KHL.
“I told him ‘You wouldn’t have to be the guy here. We have Claude, he is our guy,’” Holmgren said. “I figured even if he was a power play guy, stood in front of the net, played 10 or 12 minutes a game, that he could still be a significant factor.”
Holmgren, then the Flyers’ GM, told Lindros he would have a month or two to get in shape. The plan was for Lindros to be in the Flyers’ lineup for the last chunk of the regular season, followed by the playoffs. The Flyers knocked off the Pittsburgh Penguins in an epic first-round series that spring.
One problem: Lindros immediately declined. Holmgren told him to think it over for a few days. He checked in with Lindros four or five days later. The answer was still no. The story died right then and there.
Offering a 38-year-old Eric Lindros one last shot at a title seems like a very Holmgrenian move, especially considering Lindros had already been retired for five years. As if the Flyers' decisions the previous summer to deal Mike Richards and Jeff Carter, then sign Ilya Bryzgalov and bring Jaromir Jagr back to the NHL after three seasons in the KHL didn't cause enough of a shock throughout the league.
The 2011-12 Flyers were a pretty fun bunch to watch, and bringing Lindros back as a veteran presence would have added a dash of sentimentality to the mix — though perhaps it's for the best that he declined Holmgren's offer. It certainly makes for an interesting "what-might-have-been" story as well.
