Panthers ‘scared of Peter,' says Patrick Roy

It is called “the general manager's game,” and they play it everywhere this time of year, even in the jungle heat of Florida.

If you had to pick one player to start a team with, which would it be: Eric Lindros or Peter Forsberg?

Two years ago, such a choice would have been unthinkable. Forsberg, after all, had never played a single game in the NHL. And Lindros was already Lindros: on any given night, but not every night, the most commanding presence in the game.

In Peter Forsberg's first year in the league, the year Lindros won the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player, Forsberg won the Calder Trophy as the top rookie. Lindros did not win the Calder in his first year. This year, Forsberg's first full NHL season, he scored 116 points. And today, largely thanks to his extraordinary three-goal outburst in the first period of Game 2, Forsberg stands an excellent chance of hoisting his first Stanley Cup before Eric Lindros lifts his.

This is all pointed out not to prove which player you'd rather have — both would be nice — but to show how, in hockey circles, they have come to be considered in the same bar breath.

Peter Forsberg, who says he just got a couple of lucky bounces Thursday night, is himself the luckiest bounce a team ever got.

Four years after what is known as the biggest trade in hockey, Forsberg has come to be considered the key component coming in the direction of the Quebec Nordiques, now the Colorado Avalanche, while Lindros headed off to the Philadelphia Flyers.

What needs reminding is that he was neither the key component, nor, in fact, was he any part of what many believe should have been the deal.

The deal of record is known by all: six players, including the rights to Forsberg, two draft choices and $15 million U.S. to Quebec for the rights to Lindros.

The deal that many believe should have gone through was not with the Flyers, but with the New York Rangers, meaning that, at best, instead of Peter Forsberg leading the Avalanche the other night, it would have been Adam Graves.

The Flyers and Rangers were two of eight serious offers entertained by the then Nordiques. Sixteen teams in total made overtures. By the time the 1993 draft was under way in Montreal, the haggling had reached such a point that the Nordiques booked the entire floor of a hotel, stationed security guards at the elevator doors and set up strategy rooms and a war room where the walls were papered with potential deals and what they would mean to Quebec.

The preferred deal was with the Rangers. The Nordiques wanted it; Lindros wanted it. The Flyers made one desperate last pitch, comments were exchanged, and after the NHL had stepped in and sorted it all out, it was determined that the Flyers had a verbal commitment that had to be adhered to.

Even then, the key player in the deal with the Flyers was not Forsberg, but goaltender Ron Hextall. The next most important player was Steve Duchesne. The third, Mike Ricci.

Forsberg then was a draft pick. The year before, when Lindros had gone first overall, Forsberg had gone sixth. The Winnipeg Jets, it must be remembered, selected Aaron Ward higher than Forsberg.

Forsberg certainly had promise, but no one could have foreseen this. He was even a reluctant professional hockey player back in Sweden, his mind set on studying economics. (“In the beginning,” he says, “I didn't like it at all.”) His singular hockey ambition was to represent his country in the Olympics.

How quickly everything changed.

“No one knew,” says Pierre Gauthier, then the Nordiques chief scout and today general manager of the Ottawa Senators. “He grew two inches and put on 20 pounds over the summer, and he got faster.

“Kids grow two inches and put on 20 pounds in a summer all the time, but faster?”

His talent seemed to soar, and his fame followed. At the Olympics, he more than accomplished his dream, becoming Sweden's greatest hero when he scored the spectacular shootout goal against Canada for the gold medal.

He eventually signed to play in the NHL — this year he will make $1.55 million U.S. — came over, and started very, very slowly. Then came the Calder. Then came this. Today, both he and Eric Lindros would be in any list of the NHL's very finest players.

He is, undoubtedly, the greatest break this team ever had. No wonder he talks so much about “luck.”

In fact, if he could, he would cover all contingencies with that one word. Painfully shy in interviews, he will take no credit for himself, ever. The hat trick was a fluke.

“I usually pass,” he says. “I don't really care about the goals, as long as it is good for the team.”

When one is so self-effacing, his teammates much speak for him. The Florida Panthers, humiliated the other night and desperate tonight, “are scared of Peter,” says Colorado goaltender Patrick Roy

With good cause. When a team has this much luck going for itself, Peter Forsberg's chances of a Stanley Cup ring to go with his Olympic gold medal and Calder Trophy seem little short of superb.