Eric Lindros was the No. 1 pick in the 1991 NHL Entry Draft. But it didn’t go as the Quebec Nordiques had planned. Lindros had even told the organization before the draft that he didn’t want to be picked by them, but they didn’t listen, and Lindros wasn’t up for a compromise.
For years, he was the most hyped-up teenager in hockey, and the Quebec fans didn’t exactly enjoy it when Lindros chose to sit out his first season. Then, after what should’ve been his debut season, he got traded to the Philadelphia Flyers. Fast forward to October 13, and everybody was watching as Lindros made his first appearance for the Flyers in the city he earlier stood up.
And the fans were ready for it. Lindros was called a baby, and the fans went to the game with diapers over their pants. Some even wore bonnets and waved with rattles. And everybody had pacifiers with them.
The pacifiers were thrown on the ice so often that the game had to be stopped several times, and the NHL president Gil Stein even got hit in the head by one. Eric Lindros, however, took the pacifier rain with ease and instead delivered one of the coldest responses in NHL history.
“If I ever have kids, they’ll have pacifiers to suck on for life,” Lindros said.
