Lindros dominated youth games, often practiced with players three years older, and received an opportunity to scrimmage with the Toronto Maple Leafs when he was 14. Two years later, the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League drafted him from his Toronto-based Junior B team.
His parents, though, didn't want him bussing for hours, and Eric refused to go. Instead, he played for a lower-level junior team in Michigan before the OHL changed its rules and allowed his rights to be traded to the Oshawa Generals, closer to home. The Generals became Memorial Cup champions, and Greyhounds fans booed him in the playoffs, taunting him with pacifiers and signs, one that read: "Lindros wants his mommy."