I've seen Lindros up close and personal during his stay in Philly. I was 6'5" 235 lbs. then. Eric was maybe an 1/2 of inch shorter and had I'd say, 15 lbs. on me. I was more muscular, but Eric was thicker throughout his body. Also, Eric could do it all out on the ice. He played defense, incredible forechecker and was basically a menace to society on skates. Eric was a tremendous player and had the strength of Paul Bunyan with players literally hanging off of him and he was still able to pass the puck or get a quality shot on net. As someone else said, Eric would fight. He would fight heavyweights like Scott Stevens, Marty McSorley, Derian Hatcher , Ken Daneyko, Chris Simon, Lyle Odelein , Stu Grimson and many others. According to dropyourgloves.com, Lindros was 32-2-10 in the NHL ( only losses was to McSorley & Hatcher).
Damn, you're a mountain.
To answer the thread, I don't see the comparison at all.Ovechkin is physical, but not really "intimidating" the way Lindros was.Lindros was probably the first and only forward of his type where he just consistently ran over people like a train, was willing to back it up with his fists, and was a superstar #1 center inside that package.Who else did that?
If I try to find the closest thing to Lindros both stylistically and level of play, the best comparison I can find is Newsy Lalonde.But the fact I need to go back to the 1910s, and that Newsy was less physically intimidating than Lindros tells me Lindros was a very rare kind of player.Is there a better comparison than Lalonde for Lindros? Both centers, superstars, very physical, sometimes dirty.I feel Lalonde is a better comparison than Messier and Trottier, and I can't think of anybody else among centers.
Say what you will about the way Eric Lindros' career turned out, but he did leave a deep mark in the hockey community's imagination/subconscious, a bit in the same way Mike Tyson left a deep mark in the boxing community.I see a lot of parallels between Lindros and Tyson, where their career value might not be what it should have been, but where their peak level of play and their extremely intimidating presence made them archetypes in their respective sport.
To make another completely silly comparison, Lindros was like the Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation.He came into the league and his brutality, ruthlessness and dominance really forced you to adjust and deal with him.He was a sort of enemy you never encountered before.Like the Borg, he also ignored his enemies completely (by skating with his head down).
Ovechkin doesn't embodies anything like that.