Philadelphia Flyers: Oskar Lindblom makes his long-awaited return

The best moment in hockey took place on Thursday night as Oskar Lindblom played in his first game for the Flyers since December.

It didn’t matter the outcome of this game. Okay, it did, but that’s not important right now. Oskar Lindblom had been skating in warmups the past couple of games. But this time, he returned after warmups were over. He was playing for the Flyers that night.

Let’s go back to December when this all went down. Lindblom was diagnosed with Ewing’s Sarcoma, a form of bone cancer. He found out after the team traveled to Colorado to take on the Avalanche. The bump found originally had Lindblom thinking it was from a cross-check he took previously.

After numerous amounts of chemotherapy treatments, the surgery took place in March to remove the tumor. Some of Lindblom’s ribs who also be reconstructed during the procedure. He took to the ice for the first time in April. It was his first official workout since his journey began.

Lindblom would take another leap about two months later when he joined his Flyers teammates on the ice for the first time. It was just a few days later on July 2nd when Lindblom rang the bell to signify the end of his chemo treatments. He was deemed to be without any evidence of cancer at that time.

It was only a matter of time before he traveled to Toronto and crossed another hurdle off his list. After quarantining at the hotel, he joined his teammates for a morning skate on August 16th. It went from morning skate to warmups before Game Four against the Islanders.

It all culminated with his presence for Game Six on Thursday night. After losing both Sean Couturier and Joel Farabee, the Flyers were in need of some extra bodies. It turned out Lindblom was one of them.

It would’ve been poetic justice for him to score in this one, right? Well while he didn’t do that, he did skate 17:30 minutes. 3:31 of that was on the power play. That’s the biggest win of all. It doesn’t matter how long the shifts were or who he played with. He simply played.

But for fun, we’ll take a look at how he did. To get the stats out of the way, he had two hits and was credited with one block in the game. The other stats don’t look pretty, either. But we have to at least mention them. For his first game in quite a long time, those other stats show exactly that. What they don’t show is the effort he was able to put out each time he was on the ice.

That is incredible for a person that went through what he did. In the end, the stats won’t matter for Lindblom, though. He surely won’t be looking at them after playing for the first time in almost nine months. Claude Giroux said it best so we’ll let him do the talking.

“That was a huge boost. This kid has so much courage. He played unbelievable too. He hasn’t played since I’m not even sure, but it’s been a long time. It’s been a long battle. This guy’s heart, you have to see it to believe it.”

As Giroux said, you have to see it to believe it. Lindblom had a battle far tougher than what the Flyers went through tonight. He came out on the other side and was ready to play.