Edition: U.S. / Global

1995 N.H.L. PLAYOFFS; Muscle, Hustle and Skill: Three Fearsome Flyers

Published: May 21, 1995

The name for this threesome sounds like a comic book or a television show children might watch on a Saturday morning. They are the Legion of Doom and they play for a team that used to be known as the Broad Street Bullies.

If the Legion didn't exist in hockey, the Fox television network might have had to invent it, the way it created those cartoon robots who appear on the screen to bash each other after every goal during its Sunday telecasts.

The Legion is the first forward line of the Philadelphia Flyers, who open the second round of the Stanley Cup playoffs Sunday afternoon in the Spectrum against the defending champion Rangers.

Both the Legion and the Flyers are led by Eric Lindros, the center who is a candidate for the Hart Trophy as the most valuable player in the National Hockey League. On Lindros's left is John LeClair, on his right, Mikael Renberg. Together, they led the Flyers to a first-place finish in the Atlantic Division after a five-year drought in which Philadelphia failed to make the playoffs.

The three Flyers aren't yet as well-known as Notre Dame's Four Horsemen, who came to prominence in college football in the 1920's. In hockey lore, they haven't earned even the stature of Gordie Howe's Production Line in Detroit in the 1950's or Gilbert Perrault's French Connection in Buffalo in the 1970's or the KLM Line of the Soviet Union in the 1980's.

But, appropriately enough, the Legion is a multinational microcosm of the N.H.L. of the 1990's, the kind of image the league might try to promote during a period of growth.

Lindros is a Canadian from suburban Toronto; he ripened as a junior in the Ontario League. LeClair is an American from Vermont who came up through a college program in the United States. Renberg is from Sweden, one of more than 100 Europeans who have helped give hockey a more international look than any other major league in North America.

"We're different guys," LeClair said. "We're friends. We all hang around and talk about other things than hockey. But I don't think any of us is really alike."

What they have in common is size, youth and talent. Put together, they are 18 feet 8 inches tall and weigh 662 pounds, hockey's largest regular line. In a 48-game regular season, their combined statistics added up to 81 goals and 100 assists.

When they get their game going at full throttle, they merge muscle, hustle and skill. They intimidate opponents with hard forechecking along the glass and boards, forcing their way in the manner of linebackers crashing a quarterback's pass pocket in a football game. When they capture the puck, they send it across the ice and over the goal line with the refined finesse of a golfer moving a ball from a tee to a fairway and across a putting green.

Just as the veteran Mark Messier is the captain and center of gravity for the Rangers, so, too, is the young Lindros the key to his line and to his team. The Messier-Lindros head-to-head matchup is the best subplot of this four-of-seven-game Eastern Conference semifinal series.

A Philadelphia victory in this series could mark the emergence of Lindros as the N.H.L.'s next superstar -- or should that be superhero?

"When Eric really wants to be the best player, he is the best player," Renberg said. "And I think he wants to be that now."

Already, Lindros is tired of talking about the challenge of Messier, whom he idolized in his youth the way Wayne Gretzky worshiped Howe. It is likely that Messier and Lindros will be matched opposite each other for at least some of their shifts, perhaps for many of them.

"You guys are making way too much out of this," Lindros told reporters last week. "You're blowing this way out of proportion."

At age 22, in his third season, he is 12 years younger than Messier. He doesn't have Messier's easy, confident manner in group interviews. But Lindros still breaks into smiles and a softer voice when talking about Messier's accomplishments, his leadership and his six Stanley Cup rings.

"It's always a great honor to be on the ice with him and that team," Lindros said of Messier and the Rangers. "I hope that, when I'm 34, my legs are in as good a shape as Mark Messier's are right now."

Chances are, in the playoffs, he will have to crash into Messier and struggle with him for space and puck possession with more determination than ever before. Lindros's eyes narrowed and his voice grew sharper when talking of this.

"It doesn't matter who you're up against," he said. "He's got a job to do and I've got a job to do. Both of our jobs entail getting everybody on his team ready.

"You might have respect for them, but it's your team against their team. I want to be part of a team that goes as far as it can go. This is the fun part. This is what we work for. We know the Rangers are great and that they have done it before.

"Maybe for us there's that feeling of being fresh. Maybe we can fight them with what we have. We're not the ones with the experience. We're hoping to get some. We're hoping to gain a whole lot. To win four of seven games will be a real challenge.