Wings Vs. Flyers: A Dilemma For Lindros' Surrogate Family

DETROIT - As a teenage hockey phenom living in suburban Detroit, Eric Lindros could slam down five peanut-butter sandwiches for lunch, no problem. And his typical warm-up for a Chinese meal was five egg rolls.

But his voracious appetite for success now has his surrogate mom worried sick.

"This is just unbelievable," Judy Vellucci said last week. "I'm actually sick to my stomach."

Judy and Frank Vellucci opened their Farmington, Mich., home to the young Lindros when he spent a season playing Junior A hockey for Compuware in 1989. He arrived a frightened 16-year-old who, when left alone on his first evening at his new billet, locked himself in the bathroom, counting the tiles and flushing the toilet. He later confessed that watching "Beverly Hills Cop" had given him a misguided impression of Detroit.

But that frightened boy grew up - and up, and up - to become the terror of the NHL, the 6-foot-4, 235-pound captain of the frightful Philadelphia Flyers who are facing Judy Vellucci's beloved Red Wings for the Stanley Cup.

The best-of-seven final series opened yesterday in Philadelphia. The Wings are trying to win the Cup for the first time since 1955, when Vellucci was a young girl. And she remembers the joy it brought a city.

"I've always wanted my sons to experience the thrill of a Stanley Cup," said Vellucci, a mother of six. "And now to have Eric on the other team. . . . "

Lindros spent eight months with the Vellucci family before leaving to continue his junior career with Oshawa of the Ontario Hockey League. Ultimately, he became the NHL's first overall draft pick in 1990, by Quebec. But he refused to play for the Nordiques, who finally traded him to Philadelphia in one of the biggest deals in NHL history.

"He treated our family with nothing but respect," said Mike Vellucci, 30, the fourth of the family's five boys. "He's a very nice guy - not arrogant, but very confident. And everything he does, he does at 120 percent. He plays to win."

Mike Vellucci had a black eye and bloody nose to prove it. Seems he got caught with a Lindros elbow during a pickup basketball game in the yard.

"He plays to win," Mike Vellucci said, "and he'll do whatever it takes."

Which no doubt is what Wings coach Scotty Bowman has told his players about Lindros, the prototypical hockey player of the 21st Century - big, strong, fast, smart and mean. And fiercely competitive.

"I still remember the day, sitting in the car driving him to summer school, when people were comparing him to Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux," Judy Vellucci said of Lindros when he was still three years away from his NHL debut. "He didn't like that. He just wanted to be Eric.

"But he truly wanted to be the best there ever was. And as lofty as it might have sounded then, it wasn't shocking. He worked so hard."

The Lindros whom Judy Vellucci remembers is a youngster who logged all his daily and lifelong goals in a little black book, a kid who might have trouble finding that book in a messy bedroom.

"He was an absolute slob," she said. "His bedroom was the worst."

But she also remembers a young gentleman devoted to his family back in Toronto, and an excellent student who graduated from Farmington High, where he reluctantly had his picture taken for the school's yearbook, certain to be a collector's item one day.

And she remembers a growing boy with such an appetite that he finished off a three-pound roast, meant as the centerpiece of the family's dinner, as an after-school snack.

"He ate like a horse," she said, clearly enjoying reminiscing about the youngster she fondly describes as her sixth son.

We see Eric Lindros through the eyes of a mother, and we know a different man.

"He's just different," Judy Velucci said. "He's special. He's not like the rest of the world, truly. He's so disciplined. So focused. Even when he was 16, he worked harder and was more dedicated than any young person I've ever met - in every area."

Which only enhances her dilemma. Imagine Judy Vellucci's watching her favorite player, Lindros, like a son, leading his team to the Eastern Conference championship last Sunday over Wayne Gretzky and the New York Rangers. And then Monday, watching her favorite team, the Red Wings, dispatch the Colorado Avalanche in the Western finals.

Detroit vs. Philadelphia for the Stanley Cup.

"This whole thing is so incredible I can't believe it," she said. "Watching the Red Wings (clinch the Western title), I was actually nauseous. This coming to fruition is a bit much.

"It's a dream come true. I don't want Eric to read this. I'm so thrilled, that even if he wins. . . .

"It's just that when you've been a Wings fan for so many years, I still think I'm a Wings fan. To be able to be a part of it is really a thrill. Either way, I can't lose."

Unless, of course, we're talking about a three-pound pot roast.