Lindros, 34, will finally make his retirement official today at a news conference in his hometown of London, Ontario, several news organizations reported yesterday. The union is expected to name Lindros as a players' ombudsman soon.

Multiple concussions and wrist injuries took their toll on No. 88. During an interview with the Canadian Press last month, he conceded: "The last couple of years have been pretty frustrating in terms of not getting through without being injury-free. . . . It's just frustrating."

Lindros had 372 goals and 865 points in 760 games during 13 injury-filled seasons. One of the great debates is whether he is Hall of Fame material. He never played on a Stanley Cup champion, reaching the Finals only once, in 1997 with the Flyers.

His best seasons - eight in all - were spent in Philadelphia. The 6-foot-4, 245-pound center, who was proud to say in happier times that Bobby Clarke was his childhood idol, won the Hart Trophy as the NHL's most valuable player in 1994-95. He also won the Lester B. Pearson Award as the league's outstanding player that season.

But as his career in Philadelphia lengthened, so did the tensions and public feuding (with backing from his parents) with the Flyers' management.

"This organization has had star players much bigger than Eric play for them for years," Clarke, then the Flyers' general manager, said shortly before Lindros was traded to the New York Rangers in 2001. "They were always treated really good. Those star players never asked for special treatment. And actually, to Eric's credit, he never did, either.

"But his parents asked special treatment for him. I'd never come across anything like that. I had no way of knowing how to handle it, and we ended up trying to baby Eric all along and do whatever his parents wanted for him. And it backfired on us. It was the wrong thing for us to do, anyway. We'll never do it again."

After he had sat out a full season, Lindros was dealt to the Rangers in August 2001. He had some success on Broadway, then moved on to Toronto as a free agent before signing with Dallas, his last team, last season.

"I've been here eight years with him, and my take is: What a talent," Rick Tocchet said in 2001. "He could have been up there with Lemieux and Gretzky. Who knows? But a lot of stuff hampered him . . . injuries and outside stuff. It's not a sad story, but a story that is unfulfilled."