One of the things you’ll see on social this week is that Cutter Gauthier pulled an Eric Lindros, and that Flyers fans are hypocrites for giving the latter a free pass. Some version of that.

It’s not a great take because the Eric Lindros situation is fundamentally different.

Key point – Lindros told Quebec back in 1991 that he was not interested in playing for them. The Nordiques took him anyway. In Quitter Gauthier’s case, there was no-pre warning, and he expressed excitement about being drafted by the Flyers before the fateful night of January 8th:

That’s the main difference here. People are presenting an oversimplification when they pare this down to two guys who refused to play for the teams that drafted them. One guy was explicit in his refusal, pre-draft, and the other was not, while operating on an entirely different timeline.

There’s always been an argument over Lindros’ true intentions for not playing in Quebec. It was initially believed that the Nordiques were a small market team in a crappy stadium and everybody up there spoke French. Lindros, however, maintains it had nothing to do with that, and explained his position in a 2016 interview with Pierre LeBrun:

The controversial stance not to play for the Nordiques, who drafted him first overall in the 1991 draft, remains one Lindros firmly stands by to this day.

“The decision to not play for Quebec was based solely on the owner,” Lindros said in reference to former Nordiques owner Marcel Aubut, who was forced to resign as Canadian Olympic Committee president last fall.

“It had nothing to do with language, culture, city,” Lindros said. “Keep in mind, my wife is French [from Quebec]. I was not going to play for that individual — period.”

The Nordiques took him anyway, and basically held an auction for the highest bidder. The whole thing was a mess, and ended up in arbitration, but the Flyers ultimately sent the following to Quebec:

  • 2x first round picks (1993 and 1994)
  • 15 million dollars
  • Peter Forsberg
  • Ron Hextall
  • Steve Duchesne
  • Kerry Huffman
  • Mike Ricci
  • Chris Simon

Quebec only played four more seasons before moving to Colorado. The rest is history.