It's funny, because I swore it was Mario Lemieux in 1997, "symbolically" passing the torch to Lindros as "The Next One", which was also echoed by Wayne Gretzky. I don't recall either one of them saying (or hinting) that it was Jagr's league now. And Mario played with Jagr!
I don't recall ever reading any publication, from 1990 (when Lindros was still with Oshawa), through to 1998 (pre-concussions) when anyone who was covering the sport of hockey, ever said that Jagr was as good or superior to Lindros.
Even after Jagr's monster 1996 campaign (playing behind Lemieux which helps), I still never entertained the idea (and I doubt many people then did either) that you could do a 1-for-1 swap for Lindros and Jagr, without Philadelphia asking what else are you throwing in (not that they were going to do it anyway).
He had a ton of talent too. You can still watch his highlights, and while he bullied guys (sure), it's kind of impossible to be checking and fighting while scoring goals and racking up assists. He was very gifted offensively in his own right. I never felt that he took a backseat to Jagr in terms of offensive talent (up to '98), and it's not like Lindros only had that part of the game down.
Again, I wasn't even a Lindros fan at the time.
Yeah I remember the big storyline in 1997 was that Lindros was taking the torch from Gretzky and Lemieux as the Flyers rolled through both the Penguins and Rangers in the playoffs and he was just following his destiny to the cup. It just so happened that the Wings were clicking on all cylinders, the Flyers weren't, Vernon was playing amazing and the Flyers goalies somehow seemed even worse than they were earlier in the playoffs (which wasn't really that good either lol)
Disappointing performance all around from the Flyers, and Lindros himself, and he took a lot of heat about that going forward. Then there was of course Canada's failure in Nagano, and the concussions, and by 1999 when Gretzky retired, it was Jagr who the storyline for the torch in the final game that happened to be against the Penguins.
Even before all those failure storylines, Lindros just was never loved by the media in the same way as other mega hyped guys like Crosby or McDavid. Seems like there were always people wanting Lindros to fail even in the media and always finding something to chirp him on (I mean Crosby and McDavid certainly had/have their share of haters in terms of online fans as we can see on HF, but the hockey media seemed to be firmly behind both of them in their early years - with Crosby especially as he was especially important for the New NHL marketing, and he had the early success with the cup and Vancouver gold, but also McDavid as we saw just recently with Sportsnet almost solely focusing on him throughout the playoffs/finals, seriously felt the way they were talking after game 4 that the Oilers just won the cup lol).
Keeping that in mind, there were definitely cases of the hockey media taking others over Lindros in the mid/late nineties even before the sweep/Nagano. The Hockey News Yearbook after 1995-1996 had Jagr over Lindros. I remember after during/after 1996-1997 there was a lot of Kariya hype as well and some would have him as the next one. Of course, as I mentioned before, there was little bit about Forsberg himself as the best at the time. The Hockey News Top 50 program also included Jagr but not Lindros (who placed somewhere in the 50s in the extended 100 list they put out later) and that was compiled somewhere between the end of the 1995-1996 season and before the conclusion of the 1996-1997 season, even as it was broadcast later after the conclusion of the 1996-1997 season. If they did that in like 2010 or 2020 or whatever it would be inconcievable for them to leave off Crosby or McDavid or whoever the next hyped guy is, but at the time, not super surprising to have Lindros not show up though. A lot of the old school people in hockey at the time hated Lindros ever since he refused to report to Quebec, and much less focus paid to "marketing the stars" than now.
In general though, I think you are right that Lindros was the main guy until like Nagano, but there wasn't a unanimity (I don't really bother with The Hockey News or traditional hockey media for the new NHL, but I think The Hockey News put Crosby as first for like 10 years straight or something lol - it's a totally different game in the media now)
Obviously in terms of looking at it now, Kariya, like Lindros, had his career cut down shortly after this period. Jagr, while his star did rise to to tope around the turn of the miliennium a bit, faded almost just as fast and massively in the early 2000s. Forsberg seemed to be the clear winner in the acclaim department in the early 2000s, but he too was mostly out of sight and out of mind by the new NHL. Jagr reestablished some of his star power in the new NHL but that too faded pretty quick, but that retour after the KHL stint and climbing up the leaderboards will do wonders for you, and stats in sports seem to be more important now, as they are far more readily available and easily accessible, and society just seems more data focused nowadays anyway.
