| | PHILADELPHIA -- Slumped in a stall in a corner of what literally is a Canadian hockey barn, Eric Lindros recently reflected on his week-long step down the proverbial comeback trail, a path he's found familiar, one he wishes he didn't always have to traverse.
"I've come back from more injuries in the last seven years probably than anyone else has," said the beleaguered Flyers captain. "And I knew what I had to do to come back from this one."
Ah, but this one wasn't like all the rest. It didn't touch the knees that have been sprained so often, nor the back that has most recently been his most acute bodily hurt.
This was a collapsed lung suffered in Nashville on the first day of April, a scary injury that ended what had been a fine season, and wiped out any chance the already underachieving Flyers had for the playoffs.
|  | | Lindros needs to strap it on all season for the Flyers to be successful. |
Now, with his most urgent professional season lying before him, Lindros is still feeling the effects of that very odd -- and ironic -- April 1 injury, only this time the pained feeling is square in the lower back.
No fooling.
"I've done everything asked of me," Lindros said. "But my abdominal muscles were weaker on one side after the injury, and that's caused problems. Now, my hips aren't lined up. I wish I had known that when I started skating again. I came to camp feeling good. I went through the same routine I did last summer. Then this."
Whether it was just a coincidence that famed cohort John LeClair, who bought a summer cottage near Lindros' own woodsy palace this past year and spent the bulk of the summer working out with his top-line buddy under the aggressive attention of personal trainer Phil Zulli, is also suffering from a back injury, is something just as unclear as the origin of Lindros' lung problem.
"The explanations I've received (on how he suffered the lung injury) have been wishy-washy," said Lindros, who bled three liters of blood into his chest cavity the night after the game with the Predators. The blood forced the lung to deflate, resulting in a life-threatening situation that had Lindros in a Nashville hospital for nearly a week.
"I thought I had a small tear (in the lung), and that's what caused the blood, but now they're telling me that it was just a contusion," Lindros said. "It did happen that way. It was just so badly bruised."
After two operations and subsequent recuperation in Philadelphia, Lindros was cleared to commence workouts in June. It was nearly two months later -- and long after he and LeClair pushed each other in the Ontario cottage country -- that Lindros began to be plagued by soreness in his lower back. After being checked out by Toronto Maple Leafs physical therapist Chris Broadhurst, a root cause for the pain was revealed.
Lindros' abdominal muscles on the right side atrophied to the point of being too weak to sustain skating workouts. As a result, he said, "One leg is longer than the other," meaning his strides favored his left side and caused stress around the sacroiliac joint, the same area that has caused Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Scott Rolen to be sidelined since July.
Lindros won't put the blame on his Philadelphia thoracic surgeon, Larry Kaiser, for not cautioning him about rehabilitating the abdominal muscles. And despite stories quoting anonymous sources to the contrary, Lindros also said Flyers athletic therapist John Worley and conditioning coach Jim McCrossin should stay blameless because he sees them as having been in the dark about the problem, too.
To Lindros, the aches in his back are just the result of another bad break.
"When I left Kaiser's office, there were no special instructions," said Lindros. "He thought everything would come back naturally. I was cleared to skate, but because no hockey player had ever had this (lung) injury before, maybe they didn't know this could happen with the hip. Maybe our stride is different than in other sports. No one dealt with it before.
"My pulmonary readings were great, my lung expansion was great and my cardiovascular rate was good, too. I was feeling strong. I didn't have any idea until I started skating and felt it that I was having a problem."
The back pain may have set back his offseason progress, but it hasn't kept him from skating this preseason. Lindros spent the week in that Peterborough, Ontario hockey barn skating and working out with LeClair as their teammates commenced to knock each other around in intrasquad scrimmages.
As the Flyers were getting into the prime portion of their exhibition schedule, however, Lindros and his aching back were still taking in the action from press box level. He and LeClair participated only in an exhibition with their minor-league affiliate Phantoms on Sept. 21, a benefit game for the family of Dmitri Tertyshny, the rookie defenseman killed in an offseason boating accident.
Before that game, both were saying they'd be ready to go by the start of the regular season. Pain or no pain, the urgency of this season is something that has gripped Lindros, LeClair and just about all of their Flyers teammates, many of whom are convinced that another early-round playoff ouster will result in general manager Bob Clarke breaking up the team for good.
Not only do back-to-back first-round losses not bode well for a veteran-laden team whose trip to the Cup finals in 1997 was expected to lead to greater glories, but the contracts of both Lindros and LeClair are up at the end of this season. And the relationship between Clarke and Lindros has been on shaky pinnings since Clarke allegedly pursued trade discussions for this franchise player in the summer of 1998. Since then, Lindros has refused to sign a long-term deal because he thinks it would make him a more attractive trading option for Clarke.
These are all dangerous undercurrents for a team accepting a now-or-never fate. Perhaps only the champagne of a championship will be enough to wash away all those bad tides.
"This is a giant year for us," Flyers chairman Ed Snider said. "How long can you wait for something to happen before you have to make changes? We've made changes, but we haven't made real changes to the core (of the roster). I like this year's team, but it's if-if-if. It's impossible to predict the future in professional sports.
"Let's say we don't win, then who knows what's going to happen with our contract negotiations with Eric and John? They may go very smooth, and we'll still be together, or they may be very rough and contentious. It's never been easy to sign Eric Lindros, and I don't anticipate that it ever will be. I'm just hoping everybody has a blockbuster year, and we'll worry about those problems later. I want to win this year and worry about it later."
For his part, Lindros is in firm agreement with the owner. He says two meetings with Clarke -- a private one before the opening of camp and another one where Snider flew to Peterborough to pass a peace pipe between his two top hockey employees -- have smoothed their relationship.
The two of them still share a common goal that they swear won't elude them any longer.
"We've had a lot of changes in the last year and we've gotten all the contract signings out of the way," Lindros said. "But we still have a lot of one-year deals and guys in the last year of their contracts. So I know there's a lot riding on this year. I would say we have one last chance together, so there's an extra measure of (pressure).
"I signed a one-year deal (at the same $8.5 million he earned last season) because I wanted to stay in Philadelphia. I like playing for the fans of Philadelphia, and I made a commitment to Roger (coach Roger Neilson). He asked me what my plans were and I told him I was planning on coming back to play, because I really like this team.
"We've got a hell of a club here. We have a great coaching staff to work with and learn from. With that in mind, I just want to go out and play hockey. So we'll go through all this bull with injuries and get it over with. Because I'll tell you that there's going to plenty of other stuff to write about around here other than injuries."
If that's true, it would almost be a career first for Eric Lindros. One that's long overdue. | |
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