I’ll never forget when a very good friend of mine who is a sports psychologist (he works with many of the best PGA and LPGA tour pros as well as single-digit hackers like me) asked me if I knew Eric Lindros during one of our past sessions. I don’t know the man personally, but as someone who has followed the Philadelphia Flyers for my entire life and professionally for a few years as a syndicated hockey writer. I could legitimately write a rock opera about the life and times of Eric Lindros called “Jell-O Brain” or perhaps “The Seventh Game.”

When prodded, what my friend told me was in working with Eric Lindros that all he ever wanted “was to be loved by the Philadelphia fans.” That’s where I lost it for about 45 minutes that I should have spent talking about “putting without fear” or “playing in the moment,” but all I could talk about was how much every Flyers fan loved and cared for Eric Lindros including Flyers chairman Ed Snider and even the ultimate Flyer, Robert Earle Clarke, despite their past spats and deep differences on what it means to be a leader.

Roll the tape forward to this past week and sadly see Eric being Eric again. The Philadelphia Flyers, the second winningest franchise in the past 40-plus years and a franchise that top players take pay cuts to play for, are celebrating their former home across the parking lot, The Spectrum. The event is a preseason game where long-standing fans and season ticket holders (my family has had our seats since 1981, yet none of us today live in Philadelphia) can sit in their old seats and see a lineup of vintage Flyers receive the full respect of the most loyal and loving of fans.

Perhaps we will all hear Kate Smith do “God Bless America” one more time before they tear the old Spectrum down. The only problem is that Eric Lindros, with months and months of warning, conveniently has a “prior commitment” that will prevent him from attending. This speaks volumes about who Eric Lindros is still to this day and who the Philadelphia Flyers are as a franchise. All past acrimony aside, Ed Snider made sure Eric Lindros was offered the same respect as Mel Bridgeman and Lou Angotti, yet it was #88 who couldn’t find the time in his busy (retired from the NHL) schedule to make it to Philadelphia to stand on the same ice – at the same level – as Bob Clarke and allow some healing between he and the fans who loved him so.

After this display of selfishness, Philadelphia fans are right to hold a grudge against Eric Lindros for as long as they feel is justified. He and his enabling parents took the keys to the city and recklessly threw them in the Delaware River by making outlandish salary demands and claims of neglect by the team’s doctors.

“The Next One,” as hockey pundits and even real heroes like Mark Messier called him, was only really the next one to sit out another game injured, especially when it came time for the playoffs. The fans who bought tens of thousands of #88 jerseys worshipped at Eric Lindros’ skates during his time in Philadelphia – never complaining about giving up Peter Forsberg along with an additional king’s ransom to bring him to town. Then after all of the heartbreak, all of the money, all of the playoff games with Sir Eric in the press box – he has “prior commitments?”

You have to be kidding. For all of the money Ed Snider and Comcast paid Eric Lindros over the years with little payout at the end – it can fairly be expected for Eric Lindros to call up good old Marquis Jet and have a Gulfstream 450 gassed up and waiting at the airport to take him wherever he needed to go after the ceremony, no matter what his commitments are. He is who he is today because of the Philadelphia Flyers, Bobby Clarke, and Ed Snider, yet he is the only Flyers' captain who doesn’t seem to realize that simple fact.

The Philadelphia Flyers organization should be proud of the way they have acted here, even if Eric Lindros is that one family member who is too conceited to be part of the family. The Philadelphia Flyers fans also should take pride in the fact that they know they would have cheered their fool head’s off for Lindros for finally being a man and standing on the ice with true Flyers heroes and champions.