Lindros

A warrant for the arrest of Philadelphia Flyers center Eri Lindros was issued in the Canadian province of Ontario yesterday after a woman complained that the 19-year-old rookie was one of several men who assaulted her in a bar early Sunday morning.Lindros, who spent the weekend with his family and friends in the Toronto area, said he was considering filing countercharges.Lindros, originally scheduled to travel with the Flyers to Ottawa for tonight's game against the Senators, instead spent yesterday afternoon conferring with Flyers officials at their practice rink in Voorhees, N.J.Jim Grimley, a spokesman for the Durham (Ontario)

PHILADELPHIA - Mark Recchi leans back against his locker, relaxed, happy. The only tension surrounding the Philadelphia Flyers this season is what comes with being a favorite to win the Stanley Cup. And that's something nearly everyone in the room appreciates. "It's definitely a little calmer around here," Recchi said. "It's pretty obvious we don't have the distractions." The big distraction was Eric Lindros. The strapping center sat out all of last season after demanding a trade from the organization with which he had grown to stardom.

MONTREAL -- In a stunning turn of events, the Eric Lindros saga entered a new world yesterday.The Quebec Nordiques, who were unable to trade Lindros anywhere for the last year, apparently made deals with two teams in the morning before the NHL's entry draft.Philadelphia's entourage of front office staff at the Forum openly celebrated the apparent acquisition of Lindros. The Flyers even called the 19-year-old Lindros at his relatives' home in Northern Ontario to find out whether he was willing to play in Philadelphia.

BasketballWNBA: Minnesota team will be called Lynx.HockeyNHL: Fined Flyers C Eric Lindros $1,000 for slashing in Friday's game vs. Sabres.Pub Date: 12/06/98

If you think Eric Lindros has created a stir in Quebec, you should see what he's done to hockey-crazed Toronto.The Toronto Sun, known almost as much for its Page 3 SUNshine pinup girl as for its hockey coverage, featured a picture on the front of Wednesday's paper that had Lindros' head superimposed on Wendel Clark's body. The photo showed what Lindros would look like in a Maple Leafs uniform, and it wasn't bad.Wednesday's SUNshine girl also got into the spirit. She wore a Lindros T-shirt and called herself his "No. 1 fan."

Center Eric Lindros is three points from leading the NHL scoring race but all he can talk about is his Philadelphia Flyers teammates."I haven't changed," said Lindros, who is in his third NHL season. "Our team has changed."Lindros arrived in Philadelphia with great expectations, but by himself could not solve the Flyers' problems. The team missed the postseason party for the fifth straight year last season.Then came coach Terry Murray and the Feb. 9 trade that sent right wing Mark Recchi to Montreal for center John LeClair, defenseman Eric Desjardins and left wing Gilbert Dionne.

MONTREAL -- Eric Lindros, who refused to join the Quebec Nordiques after they chose him first overall in the 1991 entry draft, may be traded today, with Philadelphia, Toronto or Detroit possible destinations."

PHILADELPHIA - Mark Recchi leans back against his locker, relaxed, happy. The only tension surrounding the Philadelphia Flyers this season is what comes with being a favorite to win the Stanley Cup. And that's something nearly everyone in the room appreciates. "It's definitely a little calmer around here," Recchi said. "It's pretty obvious we don't have the distractions." The big distraction was Eric Lindros. The strapping center sat out all of last season after demanding a trade from the organization with which he had grown to stardom.

PITTSBURGH -- Sure, the Flyers are missing Eric Lindros. And any semblance of poise or common purpose. The orange-and-black bandwagon is about to crash through the guard rail, its brakes on fire and its steering gone after an 11-5 loss Tuesday night to the Penguins.Terry Simpson, a first-year coach who spent Sunday and Monday drilling his team on defensive play, seemed to grow as pale as his gray suit as the Flyers' fifth loss in six games unfolded. Simpson looked as if he had seen a ghost.

LANDOVER -- The Washington Capitals were to have handled dTC the Philadelphia Flyers with ease last night.The Flyers had been as cold as ice, coming into the Capital Centre with a 1-8-1 record in their past 10 road games. But the Capitals escaped with a 5-5 tie, after a penalty shot by rookie Eric Lindros sent the game into overtime."Any time things haven't been going great, and let's face it, they have been next to low -- the lowest of the low for a while -- just to steal a point out of here is good," Lindros said.

NEW YORK -- There is a certain symmetry about the numbers on their backs: 99 for Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, and 88 for Eric Lindros, the Next One. There is a certain symmetry in their numbers on their score sheets: three goals for Gretzky in Game 2, and three goals for Lindros in Game 3.Lindros' hat trick paced the Philadelphia Flyers to a 6-3 victory over the Rangers last night at Madison Square Garden. The result gave the Flyers a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals, which resume on Friday in the Garden.

Sports talk show hosts with brains (and that could narrow the field considerably) are casting an interested eye on a matter in Philadelphia that has potentially serious ramifications for anyone behind a microphone.The Flyers have filed a libel suit against WIP-AM, the team's radio carrier and an all-sports station, to boot, for broadcasting a story that star center Eric Lindros missed a recent game because he was hung over. Lindros and the team vigorously deny the story, and say the station acted irresponsibly in airing it.It's not the first time the station and the team have crossed swords over allegedly erroneous reports.

At the NHL All-Star Game last month, everyone talked about how lucky Washington Capitals right wing Peter Bondra was to be playing on a line with Eric Lindros and John LeClair. No one considered that Lindros and LeClair might have been the lucky ones.Bondra won the league's goal-scoring title during the 1995 lockout-shortened season and leads the Capitals in scoring this season with 32 goals and 56 points, but he remains the NHL's most unrecognized offensive force."Yeah, I won the goal scoring, but it was short season," Bondra said.

It was June 30, 1992, when the Philadelphia Flyers gave up a bus-load of players, the Liberty Bell, draft choices, $15 million and a dozen full memberships to the Merion Country Club to the Quebec Nordiques for the rights to Eric Lindros.Ask anyone and they'll tell you it was a dynamite deal for the Flyers, with the 6-foot-4, 230-pound Lindros, in three seasons, scoring 1.4 points per game, winning MVP and All-Star plaudits and leading his team back into the playoffs after an absence of five years.

Blackhawks: Brent Sutter scored his first goal of the season at 3:08 of overtime to give Chicago a 5-4 win over Anaheim on Friday. Chris Chelios extended his point-scoring streak to 13 games with a first-period goal.Bruins: Rookie goaltender Scott Bailey stopped 18 of 19 shots and remained unbeaten as Boston edged Los Angeles, 2-1, Friday. Kings goalie Byron Dafoe had 30 saves in a losing effort.Flyers: Goalie Garth Snow turned away 36 shots as Philadelphia stopped the Red Wings' seven-game winning streak, 4-1, Friday.

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- New Jersey captain Scott Stevens stood in the Devils' zone, calmly looking down at Detroit's Vyacheslav Kozlov, the man he had just leveled with a clean, hard check.Kozlov needed help off the ice. Stevens needed nothing.Stevens has been the dominant physical force in the first two games of the NHL Stanley Cup finals, which his team leads 2-0 going into Game 3 tonight at the Meadowlands.In Game 1, he checked Detroit's big center Keith Primeau so hard he left the game with five minutes left in the second period and still hasn't been back.

NEW YORK -- There is a certain symmetry about the numbers on their backs: 99 for Wayne Gretzky, the Great One, and 88 for Eric Lindros, the Next One. There is a certain symmetry in their numbers on their score sheets: three goals for Gretzky in Game 2, and three goals for Lindros in Game 3.Lindros' hat trick paced the Philadelphia Flyers to a 6-3 victory over the Rangers last night at Madison Square Garden. The result gave the Flyers a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven Eastern Conference finals, which resume on Friday in the Garden.

BasketballWNBA: Minnesota team will be called Lynx.HockeyNHL: Fined Flyers C Eric Lindros $1,000 for slashing in Friday's game vs. Sabres.Pub Date: 12/06/98

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- Eric Lindros scored 4:19 into overtime to lift the Philadelphia Flyers to a 3-2 victory over the New Jersey Devils last night in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference finals.The Devils still lead the best-of-seven series, two games to one. The road team has yet to lose in the series.Winger Mikael Renberg found a streaking Lindros with a cross-ice pass inside the left circle. Lindros fired a wrist shot that beat New Jersey goaltender Martin Brodeur to his right side.Brodeur allowed his worst goal of the playoffs when he permitted Rod Brind'Amour's soft shot to skip off the top of his right pad and over his right arm and tie the game at 2-2 with 6:03 left in regulation.

In theory, things shouldn't get harder for the New York Rangers now. In practice, they almost certainly will.Having knocked off the top-seeded team in the conference in the first round of the playoffs, the Rangers would figure to face less formidable opponents at least until the Stanley Cup Finals -- starting with the Philadelphia Flyers, whom they face in the second round beginning Sunday afternoon.Don't count on it.If the Rangers proved anything by dispatching the 30-13-5, first-in-the-East Quebec Nordiques in the six games that ended with Tuesday night's clincher at the Garden, it is what so many of them had been insisting before the playoffs started.