I don't quite understand why people are so quick so assume that Lindros couldn't have possibly taken another offensive jump (or two), beyond whatever they feel that his peak was. He's still only 24 years old in 1997 (up to the 1996-97 season). He's only 5 years into his career by this point, with a bunch of set-backs (not including his concussion), still only playing less than 300 then.
I don't think it's too hard to foresee Lindros adding more to his game with experience, just like many goal scoring centers have done before and since. There are people who caricature Lindros as a Keith Primeau or Adam Creighton or something, as someone who was just a factor of his size or strength, and to that I'll simply respond that we've never seen another player like Lindros since and it
certainly wasn't for lack of looking/developing, they were looking for or looking to make the next Lindros for an entire generation.
It should also be noted that Lindros worked hard on both his shot and skating in juniors, if there's any question of this guy's ability to add other dimensions and improve his game.
While I'm certainly not with any knocks on Lindros's hockey sense or nothing (don't just take my word for it, you can dig up tons of superlatives on Lindros's vision from his time in junior to his early years, the place where he was said to be lacking in comparison to Mario Lemieux generally was in his handles or "touch"), when you compare with McDavid/Forsberg/Crosby/Jagr, sure these are guys who are basically amongst the absolute best playmakers of the past 30 years right, so if you wanna say Lindros lacks a bit when compared to them in this aspect and wouldn't reach their level even with experience, well all right then.
Let's just take for granted that he didn't utilize his teammates as well as some of his peers at the time or in stature. Fair enough, I'm with it. How much of this is because of an inability to do so, and how much of this is because he had an absolutely amazing shot and could just drive to the net with impunity?
Lindros seemed to love the play of beating the defenseman wide/running over the defenseman, and either driving to the net himself for a scoring chance or going behind the net and finding the open man in the slot. This usually worked because the other defenseman, or a forward with backpressure, couldn't really do nothing to Lindros in either of these situations. Does he really need to bother with different plays many times, even if they were there? For most players they may have been higher percentage plays, but for Lindros?
I compare the situation to Brett Hull. His vision was off the charts and he was a great passer, but you knew he's shooting most times, even if there is a play open, because, well, he has probably the best shot ever lol, it's hardly a knock on his situational awareness.
I generally find the focus on Lindros's stats to be misplaced anyway, he's the posterchild for domination beyond stats.
His stats are amazing anyway, as others have already discussed, I'll go ahead and point to his road even strength scoring splits which could be argued indicate an adaptability to different situations. Forsberg is the closest comparable discussed here. Jagr sees a significant drop. Crosby got a modest drop. McDavid a bit more of a drop.