Ten years ago, they seemed so indestructible -- the prototypical line for the National Hockey League.
Big and strong and virtually impossible to contain, they cycled the puck at will. It was on the broad shoulders of the Legion of Doom--Eric Lindros, John LeClair and Mikael Renberg--that the Philadelphia Flyers pinned their Stanley Cup dreams.
Fast-forward a decade ahead. The game and the league have changed dramatically. The Philadelphia Flyers are a shambles and the Legion of Doom is long gone.
I have written a three part series on the L.O.D. for Inside Hockey. Part one will look at how the line came together and influenced other team's strategies. In many ways, the trend toward bigger and bigger defensemen was owed to the way players such as Lindros and his linemates manhandled opposing players down low in the zone.
Today, hulking defensemen and "slow" players like LeClair (although he actually wasn't slow until all his back problems set in) are largely dismissed as dinosaurs whom the game has past by. The Flyers stand accused -- somewhat fairly, somewhat unfairly -- of holding on too long to that style of hockey and suffering the consequences in the "new NHL."
Part one of Legion of the Doomed is now available on Inside Hockey. Look for part two in about two weeks and part three in early December.
Click: http://insidehockey.com/columns/194
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
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