Philadelphia gives Oskar Lindblom, former Flyer and cancer survivor, a hero’s welcome home

As Oskar Lindblom waved to the crowd at the Wells Fargo Center on Sunday night, he tapped his heart. While this time Lindblom was wearing a San Jose Sharks jersey and not a Flyers one, Philadelphia will always be a part of him.

“[I was] just trying to tell them they meant so much to me during my time here,” Lindblom said. “I just want to show my love to them.”

» READ MORE: Goalie James Reimer and the San Jose Sharks shut out the Flyers, 3-0

Lindblom didn’t just live in and represent the city for five years as a Flyer, he also battled and beat cancer here, becoming both a local and national inspiration. Sunday marked Lindblom’s first game against his former team after signing a two-year deal with the Sharks this summer.

Unfortunately, the Sharks, playing on the second night of a back-to-back, arrived in Philadelphia from Newark, N.J., too late Saturday night for Lindblom to meet friends or go to favorite spots — he misses the city’s food scene and hopes to return to his favorite restaurants soon.

When Lindblom arrived at the Wells Fargo Center, it felt weird to walk the visiting team’s path. Nonetheless, he expressed excitement and hope that he could beat his former teammates.

Lindblom was greeted during warmups with welcome home signs and even a kid with a Sharks logo taped on his Flyers jersey. Purple “Hockey Fights Cancer” and Lindblom jerseys peppered the crowd. Ahead of the game, doctors Kristy Weber and Stephen Kovach, who were part of his care team at Penn Medicine, banged the Flyers’ drum. And when he lined up for his first faceoff against the Flyers, he received a playful shove from former teammate Travis Konecny.

The game commenced, but during a stoppage 7 minutes, 22 seconds in, the scoreboard lit up with a tribute video to Lindblom and fans gave him a standing ovation. Weber, sporting her signed Lindblom jersey, sat in the front row of her suite to capture the moment as Lindblom climbed off the bench to circle the ice and salute Philly right back.

“I didn’t know they had a video for me, so it was good,” Lindblom said. “Emotional. And just the passion they have and the love they show for me, it’s incredible.”

On Dec. 10, 2019, Lindblom was diagnosed with Ewing’s sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer made even more unusual because of Lindblom’s age. Ewing’s sarcoma is most commonly found in children and teenagers. Lindblom was 23 at the time of his diagnosis.

The survival rate for Ewing’s sarcoma is 70%, but if the cancer spreads, it drops to 15-30%. It is treated with chemotherapy, surgery, or radiation, and then more chemotherapy.

» READ MORE: Oskar Lindblom reflects on his 2019 cancer diagnosis, recovery and goal to ‘feel like myself again’

As part of his care team, Weber and Kovach were initially impressed by Lindblom the professional athlete. They were also impressed he was a normal person — personality-wise, at least.

Every day that Lindblom would come in, he would sit in the waiting room with everyone else. He never asked for special treatment. Instead, he gave it to others, always showing kindness to the staff and finding time to talk to others going through similar battles. He may have been going through the toughest battle of his life — for his life — but he remained “incredibly calm and stoic,” Kovach said.

Physically, Lindblom was a different case, altogether. They rarely get to treat professional athletes, Weber said, so they don’t work with patients who are in the type of condition he is in. They also don’t have to return their patients to such a physically demanding “normal life.”

“When you treat patients, what you really want to see is them go back to live their life as they want to live it, and for Oskar that was playing hockey in the NHL,” Kovach said.

Chemotherapy wore Lindblom’s body down, but they saw him continue to try to stay in shape and keep up his nutrition. Then came surgery, with Weber, the director of the Penn Medicine sarcoma program, working to remove the cancer, and Kovach, also handling the reconstructive surgery.

“Normally, when Steve puts someone back together, they’re not going back out on professional hockey ice, so we had to be sure that this is going to be able to withstand crashing into the glass,” Weber said. “So I think Steve put his number one Kevlar reconstruction in there, so he can play hockey.”

Lindblom’s physical fitness helped push him through another round of chemotherapy and helped him recover faster. He was so focused on playing hockey, Weber said it almost seemed like it didn’t matter what they did to him. Lindblom returned to the ice on Sept. 30, 2020, just nine months after his diagnosis. Kovach had no worries about him playing following his reconstruction, although he joked that he won’t tell where it is so opponents don’t know. Weber was there that night taking approximately 300 photos.

Working with cancer patients, Kovach and Weber see incredible bravery every day. Lindblom, however, stands out because of the widespread impact of his battle. He ultimately won the NHL’s Masterton Trophy for his perseverance and has become one of the faces of “Hockey Fights Cancer.”

“I think people who are going to treatment for cancer really want to know that someone’s been through this,” Kovach said. “Oskar was an incredibly visible example of that for the city of Philadelphia.”

Lindblom was especially popular among Weber’s patients who were children.

“They all knew about Oskar and how he fought the cancer and he won and he beat it,” Weber said

Lindblom’s first full season back after cancer, he scored 14 points in 50 games, a far cry from the 18 points he tallied in 30 games before his diagnosis. But that was to be expected.

The following year, he showed improvement with 26 points in 79 games (0.32 ppg). But in July, the Flyers bought out the remaining year of the fan favorite’s $9 million contract in what general manager Chuck Fletcher described as a “very difficult” decision.

“To be honest, I mean, I didn’t expect it,” Lindblom said. “At the same time, it’s a business, so can’t really do much about that. You just have to try and keep grinding.”

Despite moving to San Jose and to “a different climate than here,” he has kept his ties with Philadelphia, especially his care team.

“They were great to me, so I don’t really want to change them,” Lindblom said.

While Lindblom has rung the bell and is cancer free, he will still have to go in for yearly checkups to make sure the cancer hasn’t returned. Weber said they breathe easier once their patients hit the five-year cancer-free mark.

Lindblom is almost three years cancer free and his health keeps improving. Last season, he said he continuously felt stronger, and this season he said his testing was much improved.

Lindblom has been playing as the left wing on the Sharks’ fourth line. He has three points (all assists), tied for the third on the team, and has played in seven of the team’s eight games.

Sunday night against his former teammates, he contributed on both the power play and the penalty kill and finished plus-1. Lindblom also battled hard against the likes of Travis Sanheim and Ivan Provorov.

After the Sharks’ 3-0 win, Lindblom walked out of the Wells Fargo Center victorious, as he had hoped. But first, he made sure to stop and sign jerseys while his former teammates lined up along the walls of the hallway, patiently waiting to welcome their brother home.

Just like Philadelphia will always be in Lindblom’s heart, Lindblom will always be a sign of hope and resilience in the city regardless of the logo he’s wearing on his chest.