"I'd like to close this chapter with you beside me" After the circus tent folded on the year-long squabble in Quebec, the franchise-shaking trade(s) and the subsequent arbitration, Philadelphia Flyers GM Bob Clarke invited Eric Lindros and his father, Carl, over to his house in South Jersey. It was Sept. 1992, before “The Next One” entered his first NHL training camp. Clarke remembers it well, some 24 years later, because he called it on Monday his happiest memory of Lindros. “His dad and I were having a beer,” Clarke said, smiling. “And I look out and Eric is outside playing street hockey with my 10-year-old son. It was special.” By that point, Lindros’ record-setting $22.5 million deal had been signed. He was a 19-year-old prodigy with unbelievably high expectations. Yet, in that moment, he was still just a boy in a giant’s body - outside playing with Luke Clarke - with an unquenchable passion for hockey, one that pours through today. No one could know then the ugliness would follow between Clarke, Lindros, his parents - Carl and Bonnie - and the Flyers. The feuds and concussions, which cut Lindros’ career to 760 NHL games, may have kept Lindros out of hockey’s hallowed hall for six election cycles. “The controversies and the injuries must have just gotten hard for him,” Clarke said. “It was a tough way to go as a player.” No longer. Lindros, 43, was formally inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame on Monday night, along with goaltender Rogie Vachon, forward Sergei Makarov and builder Pat Quinn. Leave it to Lindros, a player who was uniquely himself in a sport full of conformity, to break the mold at his induction ceremony. Full of the passion and emotion that drew him legions of fans, Lindros closed his gripping speech by inviting his brother, Brett, to the stage for a moment rarely seen on this night. “I want to close this chapter of my life with you beside me,” Lindros said, hugging Brett, whose own 51-game NHL career was derailed by concussions. Brett Lindros’ appearance was a fitting reminder of how time has been kind to the Lindros family legacy as we finally understand and appreciate the complexity and damaging impact of head trauma in professional sports. It was Lindros’ parents who pushed the Flyers to seek a second medical opinion in Chicago after his string of concussions, perhaps the first time any NHL club was ever vigorously challenged by a player with health concerns. “That didn’t bother me, not at all,” Clarke said. “I didn’t like the idea that his parents thought our doctors weren’t any good or that we weren’t providing proper care. We would have never put Eric on the ice before the doctors told us to. We never hurried him back or nothing. I think it started the NHL looking to find out more and do more for, not necessarily Eric, but every player. He started that stuff. “But I don’t think his parents should have criticized our doctors.” Lindros thanked his parents, who he said were “often under the glare of the media.” “Every kid should be so lucky to have a parent who explained to them all of their options,” Lindros said. “They never wavered, even when those choices might not have been popular.” They were especially unpopular in Philadelphia. He was belittled at times by the franchise and even publicly, more or less labeling him as a baby or soft without so much as explicitly using those words. Lindros bore the brunt of superstardom and blazed a trail at least a decade ahead of science. “It was a rollercoaster,” Lindros said, “and there were times when I was left bitter.” Time has healed those wounds now between both Clarke and Lindros. That discord lingers between Clarke and Lindros’ parents, as he said they have not spoken, but life goes on. “I understand better now than I did then,” Clarke admitted. “His dad was looking out for Eric, which he should have done. I never had any animosity to Eric. I know he was mad at the Flyers for a while, but that’s well gone. That’s a long way in the past.” Lindros seems now like a man very much at peace with himself and his legacy, saying he has “never been happier” thanks to his wife, Kina, and three children. On the ice, there has never been a player before or since to match Lindros’ unique combination of gifts. Turns out, the same is true in his conviction off it. With Brett by his side and a tear in his eye, he closed the book on it all. At long last. “It never needed closure,” Clarke said. “In my mind, Eric was always one of the best players who ever played hockey in Philadelphia. There are a lot of people who vote on this thing. I wouldn’t have a clue why it took this long.”